On 9 August, the Regional Court of Dusseldorf granted Apple a preliminary injunction against the sale and marketing of the tablet in Europe, on the grounds that Samsung’s tablet infringed Apple’s intellectual property and copied elements of the iPad2.
Samsung says there will be no immediate impact on sales, with products distributed prior to the decision still allowed to be sold. “We will take all available legal measures, including challenging this injunction, in order to ensure Samsung's innovative mobile communications devices are available to customers in Europe and around the world,” a Samsung spokesman told Campaign.
The German court is expected to hear Samsung’s bid to overturn the temporary ban on 25 August.
In Australia, Samsung voluntarily agreed to not market the US-version of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. The holding statement forwarded by Samsung read “Apple Inc. filed a complaint with the Federal Court of Australia involving a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 variant that Samsung Electronics had no plans of selling in Australia.”
A version for the Australian market will be released in the near future and Samsung does not anticipate that the ban will affect the release, or any other Samsung smartphone or tablet available in the Australian market or other countries.
Tony Cripps, principle analyst for Ovum, says the outcome is difficult to predict. “Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 looks set to be among the strongest threats to iPad’s current dominance of the tablet market,” he noted.
Part of the threat to Apple’s dominance was that Samsung currently supplies it with the chipsets, displays and processors used in its iPad and iPhone devices. A report from IDC on tablet sales in the first quarter of 2011 highlighted that Apple's single biggest threat was the Samsung Galaxy Tab which captured 17 per cent of the market share for that period. In total, Android-based tablets have 39 per cent of tablet sales.
While online critics have derided Apple’s claim that the Samsung Galaxy Tab resembles the iPad too closely (ZDnet writes that similar looking tablets were used in the original season of Star Trek), Ovum analyst Tim Renowden says Apple’s claims are highly specific and may have some legal weight. “Some of the issues raised are the number and similarity of buttons, the shape of the icons used in the user interface – these claims could go either way.”
A factor that could substantially impact this case is Google’s acquisition of Motorola and if it will be able to extend its newly acquired patents to protect its Android licensees – including the Galaxy Tab, said Renowden.
Samsung and Apple have been embroiled in lawsuits since April across Europe, the US, Japan and South Korea over the similarities between the Galaxy smartphones and tablets to the iPhone and iPad.