This actually looks like good competitive analysis more than anything, IMHO. In some sense I expect most companies to do something similar. I'd hope that Ford walks through Toyota, BMW, Honda cars with a fine tooth comb understanding all of design trade-offs and places where they can improve.
I want companies to be comfortable looking at and improving over their competitors, rather than being in constant fear of being sued.
Excellent point - Samsung looked at the iPhone design as the definitive source, rather than deconstructing use cases or consumer needs.
Even the icons and color themes are the same on many screens. That by itself shows that Samsung copied Apple in prior product reviews as well. Kinda funny that they still had so many design discrepancies...
Yes, that's a good way to put it. And a "good" competitive analysis would also analyze Apple's weaknesses, and seek to exploit them. (e.g. turn-by-turn nav, google mail integration, better multitasking, whatever)
Not if your product is lagging so clearly on ridiculously basic stuff that you get a far better ROI on just fixing the glaringly obvious deficiencies you have compared to the market leader.
Sometimes the competition does it just right and you have to make it "more similar". Many times in this case.
Sometimes the competition does it better but not necessarily the only right way, for example the email indicator on slide 20. In that case the directive suggests another way of improving the interface.
Whoever wrote this document did not want the devices to be too similar:
Strong impression that iPhone's icon concept was copied. Directions for improvement: Remove a feeling that iPhone's menu icons are copied by differentiating design. (last slide)
Wish they did that before putting the phone on the market...
But in this case for feature after feature the reason it makes the devices much more similar was that at that stage the iPhone UI decisions made obvious sense. There's a lot of stuff along the order of "we've tucked stuff off in the border somewhere in a color that blends in, but we need to make it bright and put it in a noticeable position" where the iPhone was a good example of UI done right but where the same overall direction could be had by looking at any number of other products (and not just phones either).
I've not read the whole thing, but I've not seen any clear examples where they've had lots of choice in how to make things better without making things more similar to the iPhone. Now that's an impressive testament to the quality of Apple's UI design, but most of it is "obvious" - the problem isn't that it's hard to figure out that you'd like a "previous" button to go with a "next" button, but that it takes a lot of attention to detail to get this level of consistent quality throughout the product.
And Apple does that well, and Samsung at that stage clearly had not done all that great.
If Samsung had put in that attention to detail, the devices would likely have been a lot more similar from the outset.
If I understand correctly, this is a report - for me, it's natural that it would include product recommendations as well as criticism. Whether the company follows up on those recommendations or not, is an orthogonal issue.
This is the thing I hate about HN guys: when it comes to the discussing Samsung vs. Apple nearly all members seem to close there eyes plus minds and just say "I don't see what Apple is talking about. I don't see any attempt to copy or something which got copied".
Did you even see the document? The document clearly shows that they compared nearly every feature and what needs to be done to improve their feature to work like the competition. This is like when BMW would analyze a Mercedes and say "We need to exactly work and look like a BMW. Let's have a look what we need to do to work and look like a BMW".
This document isn't about the defacto standard. This is not about how users are working with their phones and what can be improved to get a better experience with a Samsung product. This is not about analyzing how you do against a strong competitor.
This is just: Let's copy the strongest competitor on the market and we are good to go. And this exact thing is a shame and it is even a bigger shame that no one wants to admit that there is something fishy going on here!
Just stop fucking copying and start developing own good products.
And the sad thing is: it worked. They even broke sales records with it. And it seems that not even one of the biggest brands can stop one of the biggest copycat.
If I had a startup and would work on a great product and some company would just copy my ideas and would break records? I would go crazy.
Incredibly deceptive title. It's a UX review. What did you expect Samsung to do, sit around and wait for customers to complain or be proactive in ensuring a high quality UX? What exactly is wrong with using the market leader to establish how great your UX is in your competing product?
A typical UX review would be evaluating an interface on its own merits, not by comparing and contrasting everything to the way a competitor implements it (and recommending that everything be changed to look and behave more like the competitor).
This list is only this things Samsung felt the iPhone was doing better - there are lots of other things that differentiate the two phones, this is not a doc on how to clone the phone, but how to follow it's best practices.
That sounds like an incredibly idiotic waste of resources when faced with a dominant market leader. Every place I've worked we'd consider how we stacked up with the market leader first, because that's what we'd be compared to.
Agreed; it doesn’t feel like instructions to copy, rather recommendations for how the user experience can be improved. I wish the original[1] was the one on the front page right now.
I changed the title, didn't mean to be deceptive...
The part that didn't look like a normal UX review was where every difference between the devices was followed with an instruction to eliminate that difference.
Of note, on page 131: “Strong impression that iPhone’s icon concept was copied” “Directions for Improvement: … Remove a feeling that iPhone’s menu icons are copied by differentiating design.”
Even the evaluator determined that the layout of the home screen was too similar to iOS.
It's a fascinating doc. Is there a point where you cross the line from "inspiration" to methodically duplicating every last detail? Or should it not matter?
It is a competitor analysis document. Lot of products do this. Much of the feedback in that sheet is just honest comparison and improvement suggestions.
It's not just an analysis. They systematically compared every aspect of the phones where the iPhone had the advantage, and then provided a directive on how their phone should be modified so it was more like the iPhone. That's not merely analysis, it's concrete directives.
Your comment suggests that Samsung went out of its way to ape the iPhone because it wanted to ape the iPhone. If you had some other brand in their place as a market leader then it would have been that brand's phone in place of iPhone
And NO I don't think they are aping it. Such analysis is everyday stuff ...
I think that’s an interesting moral question – but I also think it shouldn’t matter legally.
That said, I can get behind legal protections for consumers (not companies) to not be deceived. I’m not sure that’s the case here, though, and at any rate, Samsung’s phones now look sufficiently different as to not be confused with any Apple products.
Yes, I also learned a lot about "trade dress" from this suit. It does make sense to me that intentionally making a device so similar that it confuses consumers shouldn't be allowed. It's a different issue than SW patents, and seems more clearly wrong to me.
Basically Samsung is comparing their product with a strong competitor's product and emphasizes its shortcomings. I wouldn't call this a document showing they copied iPhone.
Did you miss the part where below every shortcoming they issued a directive to change their product to be more like the iPhone? This isn't merely a comparison.
1. Product explodes when red button is pressed. FooCorp's products do not explode. Suggested improvement: fix our product so it doesn't explode.
2. This menu is really confusing because it has lots of entries in an arbitrary order. FooCorp's product has simpler, better structured menus. Suggested improvement: rationalize and simplify menu structure.
3. This dialog box is full of ugly scaled-up bitmap graphics. The corresponding thing in FooCorp's product does not. Suggested improvement: either provide carefully created bitmaps of the right size, or use vector graphics that scale nicely.
O NOES THEY COPIED FOOCORP AT EVERY POINT THE LOUSY PIRATES
Nonsense, right? But most of Samsung's document is like this. They've gone through their product and their leading competitor's, looking for places where the competitor provides a better user experience, and suggested ways to make their product better. Often that amounts to "do the same as the iPhone" because what happened is that they did something silly and Apple didn't. Which, sure, is good for Apple and bad for Samsung, but it's got nothing to do with patent infringement.
(And perhaps what they actually ended up doing really was just copying the iPhone everywhere. But this document doesn't say "copy the iPhone everywhere". It mostly says "here are lots of places where we did a bad job and Apple did a better one; learn from them", and there is nothing wrong with that.)
IMO nothing illegal or underhand here. Most products do this. If I'm not mistaken many products release detailed descriptions to competitors under some kind of NDA too.
Hmm. Thanks -- the link in the article looks very different now. Yesterday, the document had various ads inserted in it, and was framed by "Download" links and various other buttons that demanded a Facebook or Twitter login.
I'm not seeing any of that now, just the button you mentioned, which works.
We could save ourselves a lot of back-and-forth commenting by understanding that it doesn't matter whether this (or any) document on its own is damning or a smoking-gun. What matters is the totality of the evidence. That's what the Jury will consider. Saying "this just looks like a competitiveness analysis" is missing the overarching point. And the same will hold true for evidence introduced by Samsung.
- The document states it is highly confidential. Was it leaked? Otherwise, why does it state it is confidential?
- Samsung is a Korean company. Why is their internal document written in English rather than Korean? Is it common for multinationals to operate in English despite their country of origin?
Bear in mind that the term "confidential" only applies inside the company - that company needs to ensure its security is good enough.
However, when it comes to a court case you have document discovery and I presume this "confidential" document turned up. The judge gets to decide whether it can be used as evidence, and I presume the only thing he or she considers is whether it is relevant to the case - the "confidential" part is irrelevant.
Many Android manufacturers developed their own custom UI skins on top of Android, especially with Gingerbread. HTC's is called Sense UI and Samsung's is called TouchWiz.
There's little doubt that earlier versions of TouchWiz looked much more similar to iOS than any of the other manufacturers' UIs (or the Android default skin), which is part of the reason this lawsuit exists. Whether this amounted to outright copying or deceptive business tactics is what this case will hopefully settle for once and for all.
What was 'deceptive' about it? Was Samsung trying to get people to confuse its phones with iPhones and buy them by mistake?
edit: it is a serious question - why does the word 'deceptive' apply? Can this not be another Android vs. Apple thing (I do not own either kind of phone)?
An argument could be that Samsung was trying to get people to buy their phones as a way to look like an iPhone owner without having to pay more for a real iPhone than you paid for the 'clone'.
Another argument could be that, by selling inferior wares that look like Apple's stuff, consumers would start to think that Apple's phones are inferior. For example, you meet your friend and spot him with this black phone. In casual talk, he mentions that it isn't as good as it looks. A month later, you are looking for a new phone, and someone shows you an iPhone. Not having looked closely at your friend's phone, you may be steered away from buying an iPhone.
A third argument is that Apple spends a lot of effort and money to make their devices appear hip/cool/attractive. A clone-maker benefits from Apple's work. He does not need to advertise its wares as much as someone who makes original wares would.
Neither of these arguments are new; they are also used when people sell e.g. Bolex watches that look like those of that other brand.
I don't see how the first two arguments could apply to this case, where UI is discussed. Products being confused is a result of their (dis)similar external appearance, not their UI.
"Was Samsung trying to get people to confuse its phones with iPhones and buy them by mistake?"
Yes, that's what Apple are suggesting. FWIW I can offer you some anecdotal evidence. Shortly after the original Galaxy S (GT-I9000) was released, my partner (who was by then using Android) saw the advert for it and said "crikey, that's a bit close to the bone, isn't it?" refering to it's similarity to the iPhone. She said this before any of the brouha-ha had started. Again it's purely anecdotal so take it at face value.
That's not the point. That people need to do a double take to realise the thing wasn't an iPhone is bad enough IMHO. Samsung look to have gone out of their way to actively make the Galaxy S look similar enough to the iPhone that there is confusion. I cannot accept that the near facsimile is through "inspiration" or is coincidental. This document, contrary to what other posters have said, does not resemble a market product analysis. It's an evaluation of what they think they can get away with copying. It's very definately a smoking gun.
It is the point legally, though. Copying in itself is not illegal. It takes other elements, such as explicitly violating design patents or making a product that is similar enough to confuse consumers before it becomes illegal. And in this case I have a hard time seeing how phones that have "SAMSUNG" plastered all over the top would confuse consumers...
"Copying in itself is not illegal" Yes, it is! That's what all those design patents, copyrights and registered trademarks are all about. It's morally abject too. As a designer, I see no issue with Samsung taking the iPhone, along with other phones, and examining it to see how they can do a better job. I see no issue with them being inspired by Apple. The plagiarism here is blatant though.
Anyway, if you compare for e.g. a Galaxy Ace with an iPhone there is quite a lot of similarity in the size. shape, dimensions etc.
None of this is to say that Samsung was trying to 'deceive' anyone. What is worth considering is that iPhone was the trendsetter in the market and in a time when every new phone was being compared to iPhone a device which looks so similar is bound to raise questions of such nature.
Take a HTC Nexus One (2009)/One X (2012). While they are basically rectangles with plastic/glass screens on the front, the shape of the corner are a distinctive shape, the color and materials used are distinctive. While both are "inspired by" the iPhone they is clearly distinct designs.
In you look at the S in almost all cases where there was a decision point in the design process, the decision was duplicate what the iPhone did. When you have things like the corner ratios being substantially similar, the edging being substantially similar, even the power adaptor and cord being substantially similar then its well over the line "inspired by" line and into "we copied it" terrain.
Hence why one company is being sued for design patents and the other isn't.
The sad thing is with the Galaxy s3 Samsung have shown that they can produce a distinctive phone with its own design language. With the s1 it seems that they went out of their way not to do this.
IMO new entrants into a market usually take the position of "be as similar to a known brand without being the brand" quite often. It is easier to get early adopters that way.
Samsung weren't in any way new entrants to the market place and saying "It is easier to get early adopters that way." is basically saying that they plagiarise the market leader in order to confuse consumers.
I want companies to be comfortable looking at and improving over their competitors, rather than being in constant fear of being sued.