Apple vs Samsung: Phil Schiller’s testimony

iPhone

Image Credit: Apple

The Apple vs Samsung trial is underway and there have been a lot going on over the last few days. The highlights on Friday was Phil Schiller and Scot Forstall testifying in court. The Verge had a great live blog from the court room.

Phil Schiller’s testimony highlights:

  • “We started to look at whether you could put entertainment content on cellphones…. We realized at the time that some phones weren’t any good as entertainment devices.” Schiller states that the team had already been working on the iPad project when it took up the iPhone.

  • “The iPhone was a brand-new concept. A new generation of smartphone. The way we ended up helping people understand its capabilities was to break it up into three uses. The range of reaction was everything you could imagine, from excitement for this breakthrough product to doubt that Apple could succeed with it.”

  •  Apple sees the benefit of platform lock-in. Schiller states that “A customer that already has one [iPhone] is used to that one, that whole ecosystem… I’m more likely to stick to that product line when I have it.”

  • We’ve moved on to the iPad, which Schiller says Apple moved back to after the iPhone introduction. We’re seeing a number of press pieces, with the WSJ calling it a ‘big gamble.” Schiller says “It was a big gamble to introduce the iPad for a number of reasons. First, this was a new category of devices.” He goes on to say that tablets were considered “a dead category” at the time, and Apple considered taking it on “a risk to our image.

  • “I think there are many reasons for the iPhone’s success. For me, what I believe is really prevelant is number one, people find the iPhone design beautiful. Number two, it’s an incredibly easy to use device with all of our software inventions to make it simple and integrated.” Apple’s strength — hardware and software combined — is his third, but the trump card in Schiller’s mind is that “We’ve really taken the entire experience, hardware, software, integrated experiences, and taken the responbility to make them all work together for the customer.”

  • “Advertising is one of the most important tools we have…. We create an ad, and reach millions of customers, and speak directly to them from our company. we call it ‘Product as Hero”.

  • Apple spends on advertising. For the iPhone: fiscal year 2008, $97.5 million. FY 2009, $149.6 million. FY 2010, $173.3 million. FY 2011, $228.6 million. For the iPad? FY 2010, $149.5 million. FY 2011 , $307.7 million. Apple’s fiscal year ends in September, so these numbers are before holidays sales for that calendar year are included.

  • “I was pretty shocked at the appearance of the Galaxy S phone and the extent to which it appeared to copy Apple’s products.”We went from having something easy to market because it was so distinctive and and so famous to having something that was difficult to market” because it could be confusing to customers.

  •  “Competition’s great… Every day there are companies creating products to compete with us.” Is copying fair? Schiller doesn’t think so. “Because when you copy or steal the idea of one company’s product now you’re trading off all that investment and marketing and goodwill with customers… when you rip that off you’re trying to get all that benefit for yourself.

  • “even more shock” when he saw the original Galaxy Tab. “I thought they were just going to copy our whole product line.”

  • “It confused the customers on who’s the creator of these products. It diminishes the value we’ve created for Apple as the creator of these products, of these beautiful things… It dilutes the way customers see Apple.”

  • “One of the jobs of my teams is the forecasting process… It’s our belief that some customers are choosing to buy a Samsung product because one of the things it does is look like the iPhone and look like the iPad. It also has an affect after the first purchase,” because additional customers then feed off the ecosystem of the devices they own.

  •  “We have a term in marketing at apple that we call the Lust factor…. That’s one of the things we were going for, was a high lust factor.”

Source: The Verge

Posted by | Posted at August 4, 2012 18:21 | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Storm is a technology enthusiast, who resides in the UK. He enjoys reading and writing about technology.

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