Ondrej Holzman Internal Apple documents revealed in court on Friday show that the California-based company was concerned about potential stagnation and decline in sales of its iPhone and the rise of competition. The main interviewee was Apple's head of marketing Phil Schiller...
The sales team expressed concern about increasing competition from Android devices that offered larger displays or significantly lower prices than the iPhone. "Competitors have fundamentally improved their hardware and, in some cases, their ecosystem," one sales team member wrote in a document prepared for the fiscal 2014 meeting.
This document, parts of which were presented to the jury and subsequently are acquired and server The Verge, was introduced as part of Phil Schiller's cross-examination, which Friday as part of another big patent fight between Apple and Samsung was carried out by representatives of the latter company. The document mentioned that smartphone growth is mainly coming from models with larger displays costing more than $300 or models costing less than $300, while the segment that includes the iPhone is slowly declining.
Although Schiller stated during his testimony that he did not agree with most of the things mentioned in the document and that, moreover, he did not participate in the meeting, which was intended only for a few members of the sales team. However, he admitted that he himself made fun of competitors' advertising moves. The leaked document says that Android competition is "spending huge amounts of money on advertising and/or partnering with carriers to gain traction," with carriers not liking the high markups they have to pay Apple to sell the iPhone.
“I watched the Samsung ad before the Superbowl that they ran today and it's really good. I can't help but think that these people feel it while we struggle to create a compelling message about the iPhone," Schiller wrote in one of the emails to James Vincent of outside advertising agency Media Arts Lab, adding that he that's sad because Apple has much better products.
Samsung already mentioned the ads in its opening speech and pulled out other documents during the cross-examination of Schiller. IN email that was addressed to Tim Cook, Schiller was expressing dissatisfaction with the Media Arts Lab. "We may have to start looking for a new agency," the head of marketing wrote to his superior. "I've tried hard to keep it from getting to this point, but we haven't been getting what we want from them for quite some time." Indeed, in early 2013, Apple was reportedly so unhappy with Media Arts Lab that it considered selling the agency that had its ads in charge since 1997, will exchange.
Greg Christie, the head of the user interface at Apple, also took his turn during Friday's hearings, who testified in particular about the iPhone's locked screen. One of the patents that Apple and Samsung are suing for is the "slide-to-unlock" function, i.e. swiping your finger across the screen to unlock the device.
Christie revealed that Apple originally wanted the iPhone to be on forever, but this was not possible due to the excessive consumption and the fact that there could be unwanted presses of the buttons on the display. In the end, the engineers decided on a swipe unlock mechanism. Christie testified in court that this is indeed a key feature of the device because it is the first thing a customer sees on the phone. However, Samsung insists that its products do not infringe on Apple's patents and that they should not have been assigned to Apple in the first place.
"Head of Human Interface"
google translator in action again :D