news Korean electronics giant Samsung today claimed victory in its patent court battle against iPad manufacturer Apple and confirmed plans to launch its Galaxy Tab 10.1 Android tablet before Christmas through a variety of Australian retailers.
Apple first filed suit against Samsung to block the launch of the Galaxy Tab in Australia in early August. However, after quite a few months of back and forth action, the High Court today refused a request from Apple which would have seen it able to appeal a move by the Federal Court allowing the Galaxy Tab to be sold.
“Samsung Electronics Australia is pleased with today’s judgment by the High Court of Australia to deny Apple’s request to appeal the decision of the Full Court,” the company said in a statement. “The Full Court of Australia decision on November 30 clearly affirmed our view that Apple’s claims lack merit and that an injunction should not have been imposed on the GALAXY Tab 10.1.”
Samsung said it was pleased to announce that the “highly anticipated” Galaxy Tab 10.1 would be available in stores “in time for the Christmas shopping period”, selling for a recommended retail price of $579 for the 16GB Wi-Fi version of the tablet, and a RRP of $729 for the 3G-enabled 16GB version. The tablet will be available from retailers including Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi, the Good Guys, Myer, Bing Lee and OfficeWorks.
The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is seen as one of the main current competitors to Apple’s iPad 2 tablet, which has been on sale in Australia for the majority of 2011. Apple’s iPad range dominates the Australian market for tablets, with existing rivals such as Motorola’s Xoom, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook and the Acer Iconia Tab believed to have stolen only modest market share percentages from Apple over the past year.
Like several of the other Android tablets available at the moment, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a 10.1″ device with a touchscreen running at a resolution of 1280×800. Its CPU is a 1GHz dual core NVIDIA Tegra 2 model, and it comes with version 3.1 (Honeycomb) of Google’s Android platform.
The 3G version supports the HSPA standard up to 21Mbps, compatible with all of Australia’s major mobile networks, and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 comes with three megapixel rear and two megapixel front cameras. It can record 720p HD video. The device weighs 565g.
opinion/analysis
This victory for Samsung is pretty much a common sense one, in my view. Regardless of Apple’s no doubt extensive patent portfolio, competition in the tablet space is a good thing, especially when you’ve got one company currently dominating the entire scene with a market share which I personally believe is something between 80 and 90 percent in Australia.
However, I don’t expect the Galaxy Tab 10.1 to make much of a splash in Australia.
For starters, the tablet shares almost all of its specifications with other tablets such as the Xoom and the Iconia Tab. Those devices have been on the market for many months now, and have, by all accounts, sold pretty poorly. Are there any Australian consumers who have been hanging out for six months waiting for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 to ship? Uh, no. There aren’t. The overwhelming majority of those consumers have bought an iPad, a PlayBook, another Android tablet or even a HP TouchPad by now.
Then there’s the price.
Frankly, why would you buy a 3G Samsung Galaxy Tab for $729, when you could buy a 3G Motorola Xoom for $300 cheaper from Kogan? It’s virtually the same hardware. It’s the same operating system. It’s the same 3G connectivity. But it’s almost half the price. Even JB Hi-Fi is selling the 32GB 3G version of the Xoom for $644. Are you going to pay $85 more for a device just because it’s Samsung? I don’t think so.
Then there’s the fact that the next batch of tablets is already on its way. The iPad 3 is now strongly rumoured for early 2012. The Motorola Xoom 2 has already been announced. Hell, even Samsung itself is rumoured to be introducing a hot new tablet early in 2012 with a screen similar to the ‘Retina Display’ on Apple’s iPhone 4 and 4S.
This is the reality which Samsung is facing. Even though it has undoubtedly gotten some publicity through Apple’s lawsuit against the Galaxy Tab 10.1, even though the tablet is probably among the best of the iPad rivals in Australia at the moment, even though it will be distributed widely, and most of all, even though Samsung won its lawsuit, that doesn’t mean the tablet will actually sell.
I wouldn’t buy it. Would you?
Image credit: Samsung
If Samsung have a warehouse full of Galaxy Tab 10.1s that they need to move then the price might get a little more sensible. I think 10″ is a bit large for what I want, but if the price was right (around $350 for WiFi, delivered) then I’d get one.
The big difference between the Xoom and GT10.1 is weight. The Xoom is 730g, which is a lot of pork over and above the 565g of the Sammy. The 7″ tablets are much lighter, and more my cup of tea. The GT 7.7 is 335g and the Toshiba AT1S0 (they need to do something about that name!) is 399g. Much more conducive to reading in bed.
If we can’t rely on the courts to protect innovation, what hope have we got?
changes in legislation.
Not with rumours like this starting:
http://www.bgr.com/2011/12/08/samsung-to-beat-apple-to-market-with-retina-resolution-tablet-in-february/
In fact, I think anyone would be mad to buy any tablets till after CES (with the exception of iPad 2 if you are locked into Apple, or the Transformer Prime for those who are not)
Samsung have shown themselves to take a LONG time to get from trade show to market, so I’d be careful of the CES ‘never-never’. Look how long it has taken for the GT 7.7 to get close to market (and it isn’t even here yet).
I have to wonder what the point of a 2560×1600 display is. I’m writing this using a 1920×1200 display and that is fine enough to read two A4 pages on — it is just specmanship. I’d prefer a decent AMOLED screen that shows an A4 page at enough res to read the footnotes. I think 1280×800 does that, but maybe 1600×900 would be better.
Could Samsung please now sue the pants of Apple for lost sales ?
perhaps it will make Apple think again before doing stupid stuff like this again in the future.
Can I just take issue with the use of the term Korean in this article?
Renai; you are best placed to answer this, was the press release that you formulated this story from titled something like: “Massive blow for Korea against Apple” or something?
The reason I raise this (I wouldn’t have taken issue with your story if I hadn’t seen this) was the news-ticker at the bottom of ABC 24.
It read (not exact quote) “Korean company beats Apple in court over Tablets”.
It’s almost like in reporting there is this racist fear of the Asian companies. Again, I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I hadn’t already been annoyed by the news24 tag line. Which btw didn’t even translate any news, Apple is suing so many people at the moment I didn’t know if it was Samsung, just some nebulous “Koreans”, and I didn’t know if it was Australia or America or any of the other regions Apple is attempting to compete with (in the court room).
I see your point, but this is standard style for Delimiter. We don’t discriminate.
For example, we would write ‘Chinese networking giant Huawei’, ‘Taiwanese electronics firm HTC’, ‘US technology giant Microsoft’, ‘US software giant Oracle’ and so on.
Renai, I guess I wasn’t really complaining about your article, it just reminded me.
You had the benefit of an entire article where you explained what you were talking about. The News 24 ticker really annoyed me! (mostly because it was a headline that literally said nothing!)
@troy 665: The main reason (even I) would hesitate to buy a Galaxy Tab 10.1 (now that is, not in the past) is the imminent release of the “version 2” of all the android tablets really is just around the corner.
The transformer Prime really is looking quite good. (may just have to upgrade!)
Apart from the weight, I don’t see what all the hullabaloo is about. It’s running exactly the same software as the Xoom (which I have), has half the storage, no expandable memory, and is a fair bit more expensive.. I hear it’s pretty snappy, but to be honest I havent noticed any real lag on the Xoom.. why anyone would buy one is beyond me.. I’d either spend the money and get an iPad or get the much cheaper Xoom..
The space was the big killer for me… 16GB is nowhere near enough for a tablet where you would put movies, TV shows, pictures and so on. Hell, the 32GB on my Xoom wasnt enough, and I had to buy an SD card to expand..
PeterA I think you and I and probably a lot more, kind of thinking the same as you have mentioned .bullying comes to mind ,hope not politicaly?? I have always asked the question about the other so called Tablets ? They are all the same but different in there own way ,example: Smart phones,Banks,Cars,TV’s, etc…list goes on . dissapointment in Australia taking so long to over ride there decision to allow Samsung to sell tablet 10.1 here .Don’t get me wrong ,I had an Ipad 1 loved it,2 came along ,sold 1 to buy 2, inbetween that 10.1 came in to the lime light ? Long storie ,short ,bought Gallaxy 10.1 and love it more… like i said same ,same but different .and as for you Ranai,your comment about ” I quote..I wound’nt buy one ,would you,” just because you dont like Gallaxy 10.1,please do your home work before slagging off. 2 thumbs for Samsung…
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