The trial between Apple and Samsung proceeded into another day which saw the testimony of Philip W. Schiller, a senior executive at Apple and also, the most senior executive to appear in the courthouse thus far. His testimony was mostly concerned with the history of Apple and the overall functioning of the company. Prior to that, Samsung and its attorney, John Quinn, were at the receiving end from Judge Lucy Koh over the issue of releasing rejected evidence to the media. Samsung argued that the evidence would have shown that Apple’s designs were in fact inspired by designs from Sony. The Judge continued her effort to maintain the integrity of the trial by asking the jurors if they had seen any reports of the evidence and while one of them admitted to reading headlines, none of them knew any details of the actual documents. The Judge went on to assure the jurors that all the documents would be compiled and they would be getting them at the appropriate time.
The testimony from Mr. Schiller revolved heavily around the history of the company and how the iPhone came into being. He started off by explaining the perception of Apple through its products, especially the Mac computers, and then went on to say that the iPod was the first hit of the company. It was at that point that people suggested various products for Apple to diversify into but the company chose cellphones as they were not being perceived as entertainment devices yet. He went on to say that the company began working on the tablet device that is now the iPad.
Mr. Schiller proceeded to say that the company didn’t have to work on any marketing of the iPhone as the press was doing it all considering the innovative design of the phone. However, the attorneys and Mr. Schiller changed their approach to the trial and showed the spending on advertising once the competition increased. The figure s showed a spending of $97.5 million in 2008 and $149.6 million in 2009. Though it wasn’t mentioned explicitly, it was hinted that Apple’s advertising expenses increased because of the patent infringements from Samsung.
Towards the end of the trial, Mr. Schiller justified that the popularity of the iPhone was because of the straight and simple design and that it is still popular. It will be interesting to see how Samsung is going to counter this.
