Samsung Mobile head: “No Compromise!” with Apple on patents
By Vlad Bobleanta on 08 Mar 12Apple may have offered Samsung a patent licensing deal recently, but that doesn’t mean that the Korean company is eager to pay Apple anything. One would assume that Samsung should at least consider paying a royalty to Apple for each Android device it makes. After all, Apple has already been successful in a number of lawsuits it brought against Samsung so far.
But it looks like Steve Jobs wasn’t the only stubborn CEO in the industry. He may have declared “thermonuclear war” on Android and Android device makers (Samsung chief among them), but Samsung Mobile’s head also vows not to settle with the Cupertino company on patents.
“No compromise!” is what Shin Jong-kyun, the head of Samsung’s telecommunications division told Korea Times. For Samsung, the patent war with Apple is getting more and more important and the company seems increasingly willing to go with an ‘all in’ strategy. It’s upped its budget for the patent war to $260 million for this year from the $200 million it previously thought it would need.
The ongoing litigation might ironically be helping Samsung, by providing it with much needed brand awareness in some markets. After all, many people are always ready to root for ‘the little guy’ being harassed by the ‘big, incumbent bully’ and despite Apple’s past (when it signified that little guy), it’s now increasingly being perceived as the latter. So Samsung could be benefiting from that perception. There’s also the saying that any publicity is good publicity, and all these lawsuits are certainly publicized a lot.
Shin unfortunately didn’t comment on whether Apple and Samsung are or have ever been in talks for an out-of-court settlement of any of the cases they’ve been involved in.
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