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Samsung Opens New Apple Store In Australia
An anonymous reader writes "Samsung opened its first retail 'Experience' store in Sydney, Australia today and its design and ethos, even in the most generous light, bear an uncanny resemblance to those of the Apple Store. Now, to be fair, Samsung’s corporate color is blue and there are only so many ways you can design a retail experience. That said, it seems difficult to look at Samsung’s store and not immediately be reminded of Apple’s understated chain of brick-and-mortar retail stores which, at the time it debuted, was considered pioneering. And it’s awfully hard to imagine that the similarities between the two won’t further bolster Apple’s allegations that Samsung is a 'copyist.'" This comes on the heels of both companies claiming the other is "anticompetitive" during Tuesday’s summations in the Apple-Samsung trial.
To be found at the Sydney Morning Herald website: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/store-wars-samsung-apple-gadgets-at-10-paces-20120823-24njn.html
The link in TFS is lacking any detail. Go to the above.
These are starting to get a bit far fetched, it doesn't exactly look dissimilar to the telstra shops for example...or many other retailers for that matter.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3vFsOeGVkd4/ShVBnWKXkGI/AAAAAAAAAHo/hF60UTm0Yo8/s1600/08212094-Table-Book2.jpg
"... always going forward 'cause we cant find reverse! "
They really should have called the Smart Tutors the "Samsung Smart Guy". Psst: it's from Conan! On a serious not, I understand that two wrongs don't make a right, but after the whole rounded corners thing, I don't see how this is wrong.
Not a big fan of Samsung or Apple but apple store reminds you of expensive "boutiques" that sell jewelley or other fashionable stuff.
My earliest rememberence is early 1990's !
who copied what again? and don't say it's an electronic store with genius people!
Already Checked the store out.
If you run up and down george st (where it is located), you'll be amazing at how many of the tech stores look very similar in layout (esp all the mobile phone stores).
hell even some of the food stores (mainly cupcake!) are using similar layouts now as well.
Troll bait title if I have ever seen one :-)
Its a company retail outlet, it looks no different to the Sony store down the road.
G
Out of spite I'd be happy to move into an Apple store to order a Samsung and to claim Apple's store is copying Samsung's. Just to get the equivalent of a bar fight started but then in a techno-ip setting.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Tesco stores look remarkably similar to Wall-Mart.
an scruffy balding asian dude with glasses in a black turtleneck and jeans
Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property; A Corporation is the legal fiction that property is a person.
How can Samsung open Apple Store!
Yes, but Apple have those devices with the amazing high resolution screens, those screens made by some company in Korea - name starts with S I think :)
Oh, they say that about everything...
And every convention stand has prior art.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
It just dawned on my how much Apple's store looks like every single mobile phone store in Australia, with the exception of the "3" stores and their former neon coloured changing lighting which made your eyes bleed, but even they are now Vodafone stores so there goes that resemblance.
The only thing that makes this look at all like an Apple store is that an article about it brings out trolls and fanbois who post on slashdot.
It's the lesser known post malum ergo propter malum fallacy.
If samsung just had admitted to imitating a succesfull buisiness model and design at the start of all the fuss instead. No shame in that to my opinion.
Bach says it all.
I'd have to say that the Microsoft stores are far more similar to Apple stores than this one is. It looks to me like a fairly generic "gee whiz future" kind of styling.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Of course it's a copy, that much is obvious. And there are other ways of designing a retail outlet.
That said, most of them are copies. Everyone looks at everyone else and checks on what works and what doesn't. Most supermarkets look so much the same that if I blindfolded you and dropped you inside of one, you'd have trouble telling which one it is. Same for most clothing stores, hardware shops, etc. etc.
Because while there are many ways to do it, there is always a rather small number (often just one) that the majority converge to. Mostly because it simply works (or everyone believes it does) and store layout is not the point at which they're willing to take a risk. Everyone once in a while, someone does and everyone else watches closely, and if it works, you'll find it copied elsewhere quickly.
So, tl;dr: Yes, it's a copy. No big deal, happens all the time in retail stores.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
How's the prices? Still gouging Down Under like always?
Samsung's tables have rounded corners.
i seem to remember Sony stores opening long before apple stores...
There was even footage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YciM_54HzZk
My site
The broad, rectangular wall displays.
Little known fact - not only did Apple invent rounded rectangles, they invented the regular kind too
The airy, spartan layout and open floor plan
And open plan architecture
dedicated customer support desk
And customer service
A group demonstration area.
...demonstrations
Clean lines.
...cleanliness
Blue T-shirts for all store employees.
...and the colour blue.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
If what you want is an apple, all trees look like apple-trees.
Some far older stores look like this. Hell, a make-up department in Bijenkorf Amsterdam (big rounded white curves, lots of light, big displays) (dutch department store) looked like this long before Apple became cool again.
There really are only so many designs and layouts you can think off. Even only a few colors. You could for instance color your store yellow but everyone would go insane. Yellow is NOT a good color for interiors. And entire range of the spectrum OUT of the question.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This thing is going far beyond any reasonableness.
Samsung is not adding an apple logo on their product. This is a fact.
"SAMSUNG" is clearly different from "APPLE". This is a fact.
There are not many choices to "design" a touch tablet/smartphone:
- they have to have a rectangular shape (triangular? Pentagonal? Irregular?);
- sharp corners are not viable, so they have to be more or less rounded;
- thickness cannot be increased just to look different;
- icons are a de facto standard in GUIs.
Also these are facts.
99.9% of users can read and can tell an Apple product apart of a Samsung one. This is a fact.
So, finally, what's Apple protecting? The shape? The corners? The proportions? The icon shape and colors? The concept design of a store?
Or are they concerned about their customers not being intelligent enough to distinguish two different brands?
Ah! All this is frivolous and needs a good quantity of crack to go on!
If I was Apple, I would rather sue the pletora of Chinese companies manufacturing and selling touch smartphones which are clearly designed and packaged to mimic Apple products.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Honestly, I've seen many retail stores lately having fun with getting not a new phone. They all look like that. Beside, t-mobile is pink (magenta as they call it) and ohters are green or orange. Now when Samsung is blue then that fits that logic. Apple stores also look like any other store. They have this "We are sooo fancy" design. If they start fighting over shop design then they have become totally crazy. Oh wait ...
Actually they have that, but they are not called Geniuses they are called Smart Tutors. And no, I'm not joking.
Sony stores opened long before Apple Stores. First Sony Style store opened in the early 1980s even. There were many Sony retail stores worldwide before the first Apple store in 2001.
Apple directly took the idea of opening it's own one-brand direct retail store from Sony.
Now get off lawn etc etc
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
The Bose stores and lots of others are like this. I hope the Samsung stores have an actual dedicated cashier area so that I can get in and get out efficiently. Sure, I might want to play with the stuff sometimes, but not every time and not all damned day.
I guess it's interesting to watch the two large companies go at it and all, but let's not make it into something it's not.
Is Samsung copying Apple? Yes and no... I think it's partly natural evolution of its marketing as its brand grows in popularity and party, perhaps at some level, a bit of a jab at Apple.
Would they have done this without a bunch of law suits from Apple? Yeah... pretty sure they would have anyway. But it's more fun when you are making the veins in Apple executives' necks bulge out.
One can argue that Apple didn't "create" any of the things it claims to own in whole. But it is without question, I think, that Apple has really made it all its own and distinctively Apple. Too bad law doesn't really protect "making something yours" as well as creating something original... for Apple, not for us.
Wake me up if Apple actually try to claim that this new store infringes their IP rights.
Even then, it's not a case of "did they copy" but rather "did they infringe any valid, enforceable, copyrights, patents or trademarks" because it is completely bloody obvious that anybody designing a new consumer IT retail store would take a few leads from what the most successful international chain of consumer IT retail stores was doing.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
It also looks like a T-Mobile store. Maybe T-Mobile should sue both Apple and Samsung since T-Mobile stores looked like that before Apple opened any stores..
Apple store is designed as a modern museum.
I'm pretty sure Apple invented stores.
The patent i think describes a place, indoors, where you sell stuff.
Smile... tomorrow will be worse.
Samsung can expect a new lawsuit from Apple after copying the "look and feel" of Apple stores. I say that as a joke, but I'm sure at this very moment Apple's lawyers are looking into the possibility of securing IP that covers elements of their store layout.
Apple has taken technology from something that only geeks used to something that is fashionable, but the fashion industry is driven by trends. Right now Apple is setting many of these trends, but it can't stay that way forever - trends are fickle by nature and someone else is bound to come up with something people want more. It will be very interesting to see how Apple and its fans react when Apple is no longer the trendsetter.
In both cases, the Spartan look is born of cheapness, not coolness. Sparse fixtures and display cases don't cost much.
That the product turned out hot was the bonus.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This comes on the heels of both companies claiming the other is "anticompetitive" during Tuesday’s summations in the Apple-Samsung trial.
I'm pretty sure all publicly traded companies are anticompetetive by nature. Except where they are forced to behave otherwise by a government. It's the only option unless a company is privately controlled and decisions can be made on a basis other than what is going to make shareholders the most money.
Well clearly they are totally different in that case!
Geniuses are born. Tutors can be trained.
PS> Love the Galaxy S III cake in one of the photos. Can't ever remember seeing that in an Apple store.
The cake is a lie.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
But Apple fans had never been to a Sony store before Apple stores became popular, i guess?
Wow, you've never been around designers, have you? It takes thousands of hours and much money to develop stuff like that.
You simply don't realize the cash, angst and determination needed to spend your life in a Starbucks. And remember, MacBook Pros aren't cheap these days. Besides, they just bumped the price on Prilosec.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
... the only one who find strange that Samsung opens an Apple Store instead of a Samsung Store?
Samsung is one of the few companies willing to tackle Apple on in terms of style. While I agree that Samsung blatantly ripped off Apple with their first Galaxy phone, they have pretty much branched away from Apple's designs and started setting trends for the "rest" of the Android market.
So, get over it. Apple is a trendsetter and people will follow those trends in their product and design. Its absolutely retarded for Apple to produce a hit product and then expect the rest of the world to not match it's design trends. Design trends have been a staple of the retail marketplace for hundreds of years. Its the reason why all cars look the same in a given generation, its the reason why all homes look the same in a given generation. Its the reason why movies look the same in a given generation, its the reason why music sounds the same in a given generation. You make something that everyone else likes, other people will match and expand on that design.
Everybody is ripping off everyone else. Apple should be flattered and even have their ego inflated to epic proportions given the fact that everybody wants to copy their designs and bring their own flavor to it. If Apple wasn't a paranoid little prick, worried about losing their market share to the sheer weight of potential of their competition, they would enjoy the fact they are defining a generation of mobile devices. They are at the top of the food chain but are too busy trying to piss on everyone else to enjoy it.
Apple needs to get over it and I hope the Apple vs Samsung trial rules in Samsung's favor just to smack down the smug, little biatch that Apple has become, worried about stupid people that might confuse one set of rounded rectangles for another while at the same time rising to the most profitable company in history. I mean how insecure do you have to be to have 600 BILLION in market capital and still feel inclined to crap out petty irrelevant lawsuits.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Do you mean Samsung will require customers to make an appointment to speak to a store employee? Even if all they did was to pick up a headphone or adapter cord from the display and they just want to pay for it and get out? But they've got to wait their turn behind some moron who can't find the 'Any' key on their new MacBook?
Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.
Have gnu, will travel.
Clearly you've never been to a B&O or Bose store, back in the 90s. The Apple Store is a damn-near exact copy of the B&O store experience.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I recall thinking how similar the Apple store was to the Sony stores in the area (Novi, MI) when they first came out and thought Apple was ripping off Sony.
You cant copyright a store layout. This is why they often do not allow cameras in stores. Because it is perfectly legal to copy the furniture layout and style of a store. This is not something which can be patented or copyrighted. I see this in the restaraunt industry all the time. Each trying to look distinct, but everyone copying good style ideas from one another. So the whole question of whether the store 'looks like apple' or not is pointless and has no legal bearing. It is simply an observation to agree with or not.
Apple shops remind me very much of the plainness of an Ikea store, so why haven't Apple sued Ikea?
I'd say he was referring to the ipad and iphone.