Yesterday was quite an eventful day at the landmark trial between Apple and Samsung as top Apple executives – Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall took the witness stand.
Phil Schiller – Apple’s marketing chief was the first witness to speak at the trial yesterday. He described his reaction on seeing Samsung’s Galaxy smartphone and tablet for the first time.
Here are some of the excerpts:
Apple counsel Harold McIlhenny asked Schiller about his reaction when he first saw the Galaxy S. Schiller said: “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 so famous to having something that was difficult to market” because it could be confusing to customers.
When asked how he feels about competition. Schiller said: “Competition’s great… Every day there are companies creating producs to compete with us.”
When asked if copying is 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.”
Schiller said he was even more shocked 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.”
Schiller felt it had an impact. ”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.
You can checkout the full coverage of Schiller’s testimony at The Verge.
