So the legal eagles at Apple are pressing ahead with their lawsuit accusing Samsung of “slavishly” copying the designs of Apple’s own products, such as the iPhone and iPad.
The South Korean electronics giant issued a robust response, saying in a statement, “Samsung will respond actively to this legal action taken against us through appropriate legal measures to protect our intellectual property.
Apple’s lawsuit, which comes in at 373 pages, contains some interesting information regarding sales figures for some of the company’s most popular products, the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
The lawsuit is available as a pdf file, ideal for any budding lawyers out there who like their bedtime reading to fall in the category of “heavyweight”, grab the magnifying glass from the drawer and take a look yourself.
Information contained within the lawsuit shows that by March this year, Apple sold an impressive 19 million iPads, a colossal 60 million iPod touch media players and an app-creator-pleasing 108 million iPhones. That’s a whole lot of electronic components (many of which were made by Samsung).
Those figures will already be out of date – they can’t make the iPad 2 fast enough, with wait times of between two and three weeks showing at the online US Apple store – but they nevertheless indicate just what an enormous number of units the Californian-based company is shifting.
It’s unlikely that the lawsuit or any counter-lawsuit from Samsung will have an effect on sales, just so long as Samsung keeps supplying Apple with the necessary components.
On Wednesday, Apple will be announcing its financial results for the first calendar quarter of 2011. It should yield good news, as it was during this time that the iPad 2 was released, as well as the new MacBook Pro model featuring Intel’s revolutionary Thunderbolt data transfer technology. Hot cake, anyone?