Samsung Electronics recently lost the patent infringement lawsuit that Apple had launched against it in the US. Paradoxically, although Apple was the big winner, the loss could be beneficial to Samsung, the world’s biggest supplier of mobile phones. Not only will Samsung gain better name recognition in the US market, but thanks to the company’s ability to respond quickly to change, the damage might be shifted to other mobile phone makers that use Google’s Android system. As a result, Samsung may find its leading position strengthened in the global smartphone market.
It is no accident that Samsung has become a giant in the global electronics market, where it is running almost neck and neck with Apple.
From the moment the company entered the smartphone market, it worked diligently to become a market leader and made huge investments in research and development. Samsung truly followed the adage that “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”
Original design manufacturing was just not enough for Samsung.
This is also why South Korea mobilized the whole nation in support of Samsung’s growth, while Samsung itself took concrete and practical action to effectively build a national brand.
The company lived up to the expectations of the South Korean government and it went on to become a world-class international company.
These days, regardless of where you are in the world, you can see Samsung advertising. In addition to thoroughly overcoming its Japanese competitors, the company has not been afraid to take on the world No. 1, Apple.
It should not be surprising that as Samsung’s popular Galaxy smartphones now rival Apple’s popular products, Apple has launched a series of patent lawsuits against the company.
The reason for this is very simple: Samsung is Apple’s main competitor, and the only way Apple management will be able to sleep soundly at night is by defeating Samsung.
However, trying to warn other competitors in this manner may not be a successful strategy. The crux of the matter is that Samsung will not just sit around and wait for a death sentence, so even if its popular Galaxy smartphones are banned from the US market, Samsung could well be making further changes to the design of future models in order to avoid those areas where it has been judged to infringe on Apple’s rights. Once the product bans that may result from the current lawsuit take effect, further changes will be made to Samsung’s new products so they can enter the US market.
Samsung is no pushover. The company has its own research and development capabilities that enable it to develop new growth avenues and follow its own direction. When necessary, the company will be able to change and engage in forceful competition with Apple.
This is precisely the capability that is missing in Taiwan. Here, companies lack the skills that are required for innovation. They are limited and restricted by their people. They turn only a meager profit, which just barely allows them to keep living.
Chu Yen-kuei is a lecturer of law at National Open University.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs