Apple and Samsung have just announced an agreement to settle all lawsuits filed against each other outside the United States. In which case, a total of nine patent battles outside the US — Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Japan, The Netherlands, Spain, and the UK will all be dropped. However, the battle is far from over on the battleground in US. The deal struck between both tech giants resulted a joint statement, “Samsung and Apple have agreed to drop all litigation between the two companies outside the United States. This agreement does not involve any licensing arrangements, and companies are continuing to pursue the existing cases in US courts.” Beyond that, there were no further comments.
For both Apple and Samsung, the what seems to be an endless war of patent lawsuits is really the fight for the marketshare for mobile devices, rather than just the money. It all started from a fight between the both companies over the designs and functionality of their smartphones and tablets back in 2011. Apple initially took first blood in filing a suit against Samsung for copying the look and build of its iPhones and iPads. Fast forward to recent news, Samsung was found to have wilfully infringed on several Apple patents in its products, and is ordered to pay $119-million in damages to Apple. As a result, Samsung released a statement:
We agree with the jury’s decision to reject Apple’s grossly exaggerated damages claim. Although we are disappointed by the finding of infringement, we are vindicated that for the second time in the U.S., Apple has been found to infringe Samsung’s patents. It is our long history of innovation and commitment to customers choice, that has driven us to become the leader in mobile industry today.
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Both companies will now stick to appealing decisions in the US. John Quinn, an attorney for Samsung predicted that Apple would soon put a stop to its patent infringement lawsuits on other vendors such as Samsung. The efforts haven’t been able to shift market demands away from smartphones built on Google’s Android software. 
Apple Growth Up Till Q1 2014
Currently, Apple and Samsung are two of the biggest player in the smartphone market. Apple now has two-thirds of its sales from the iPhone and the iPad while Samsung still dominates the market as the world’s largest maker of smartphones. Both will continue dominating the market and will be up against competing vendors such as Xiaomi from China in emerging markets.
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