The second California patent war between Apple and Samsung has turned up some internal documents from Samsung, showing how Samsung was focused on its number one competitor, and how its “#1 priority” in 2012 was to beat Apple.
The internal document outlines the lessons Samsung learned in 2011 as it continued development on its Galaxy line of phones and faced a patent infringement lawsuit from Apple. Samsung considered the threat from Apple to be “extremely real and urgent” and communicated to employees that “everything must be [in the] context of beating Apple” in 2012.
The new set of documents reported by Re/code and AppleInsider, listed the expected features of the upcoming iPhone 5, and predicted how well it would perform in the marketplace. The documents also detailed Samsung’s strategy of “continuous” branding campaigns where “Galaxy Nexus rolls into Galaxy Note into GSIII,” similar to Apple’s consistent iPhone branding.
Samsung hoped that customers would “walk into stores asking for Samsung.” Noting a need for Samsung to understand why consumers purchase Apple, and then to come up with countermeasures.
It’s shown by the documents that Samsung shifted its products to serve carriers, as 80% of its product roadmap consisting of joint projects, exclusive offers, and low-cost handsets for entry-level consumers.