Apple vs. Samsung calls on the Monday after

Apple vs. Samsung calls on the Monday after

I was out on a date recently (Note: Mature, handsome tech reporter available for dating in San Jose) and my date showed me her new Samsung SIII smartphone. I couldn’t resist testing to see whether it still used the bounce-back feature described in Apple’s ‘381 patent.

Nope.

That’s what you might call a workaround.

I suspect there will be a number of Monday morning phone calls today, given the landmark $1.05 billion verdict for Apple in its suit with Samsung announced late Friday. Some of those calls, I suspect will be smartphone product managers calling down to engineering or up to legal to see if they need any of a half dozen workarounds to stay clear of similar suits from Cupertino.

In some of those calls, I suspect there will be discussion about use of Windows Phone as a safe harbor during the ongoing mobile patent wars in which this case just landed a few hits on the dominant Android camp. At the end of the day, I don’t expect Microsoft will get many Android refugees.

I suspect there may be some other calls, too. They may not come Monday morning, but they will come from Apple’s legal team calling its counterparts at its top competitors. They may inform them the price of that license-in-negotiation has gone up.

No doubt there will be a few water cooler conversations, too. Some will rag on Apple, others on Samsung for any of a billion reasons. At the end of the day, I wonder how those conversations may affect—if at all—smartphone and tablet buying plans.

Will more people buy iPhones and iPads to show their support for the company that claimed it helped invent the modern cellphone and tablet? Or will purchases of Galaxy handsets and tabs go up in sympathy with what some may see as a (very big) underdog beaten down by the world’s most valuable company—with a hubris to match its market value?

Certainly some techno-phobes will call their geeky friends—some of whom may be engineers—to ask which products they should buy. Was Samsung the bad guy? Or was it Apple? What would you tell them?

Casual buyers may be confused about what it all means. I suspect there will be more than a few patent-savvy engineers who will shake their heads as they read the latest blogs this morning, just as unsure what to make of it all.

Think you know what in the end it all means for the industry, the mobile engineer and/or Joe Consumer? Share your thoughts below.

Not sure and want to study some of the documents and stories of the trial. Check out our coverage here.
TAG:Samsung Apple Patents Infringement Smartphones Handsets IPhone IPad Court Verdict