Tech giants in ad war

Ashis Dutta Roy

Call it naivety or the usual click-baiting of tech publications on the internet. About six weeks ago, many news outlets around the world boomed how the defining technology duel of the decade had finally come to a close. Apple and Samsung had settled their seven-year-old feud over allegations of patent infringements. The terms of the settlement of course were not made public.

If the feud ended, the participating companies clearly did not get the memo. As Samsung geared up to launch its flagship Galaxy Note 9 smartphone, a gadget that does not directly compete with the iPhone, but has, over the years, arguably been the biggest reason for its increasing size and ambit, the Korean electronics maker unleashed some of the most brutal ad campaigns targeting Apple.

Dubbed ‘Ingenius’, the series of ads targets many of the iPhone’s questionable design choices — like the nixing of the headphone jack (“dongles are genius!”), a firm refusal to allow expandable storage (“Why not pay $100 more?”) and the outrageous decision to charge extra for a ‘Fast Charger’ on a Rs 1 lakh phone (“Hey, but at least it comes with a notch”). The notch — the odd cutout on top of phone screens that has polarised the gadget-buying community like few other ‘features’ in history — also features in one of the ads. A family of three — obviously Apple fans — is seen sporting a “notch” hairstyle in the ad, adding to its hilarity.

Apple, of course, is never one known to pull punches. Only about a decade ago, Apple had launched equally vicious ads targeting Microsoft’s much-maligned operating system Windows Vista. The PC, it made out, was a boring, brown suit wearing man just good enough for spreadsheets and frequently susceptible to viruses. The Mac on the other hand was a trendy college student whose coolness was difficult to contain on a screen. Even today, Apple regularly takes shots at Android at every opportunity for delayed updates that never come to all devices and apps that blow up in your face. So it will only be worthwhile to see how they respond.

The hostility began way back in 2010. Three years after Steve Jobs introduced the world to the iPhone, Samsung managed to hit success with the first Galaxy S smartphone. Probably for the first time, a widely produced Android phone had a larger, more advanced display, a better camera and marketing muscle to take on Apple.

The feisty California-based company, however, wasn’t going to let it get away with it so easily. What followed was one of the bloodiest corporate legal battles in the recent history with Apple accusing Samsung of copying a host of designs of its app grid, the ‘Slide to Unlock’ lock screen, and much more.

In late June this year, it was this fight that ended as Apple and Samsung agreed to end the years-long legal battle and move on. The more circumspect of analysts, however, don’t see the war ending any time soon.

The thing is, Apple and Samsung have roughly the same goal: To convince people to spend $1000 (about Rs 70,000 in the Indian context) on a thing you will use for two years – albeit with an unhealthy obsession. As more agile brands like Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo and OnePlus carve into the price-sensitive share of the pie, Apple and Samsung are pushed to do more to defend their duopoly on the higher-end market.

Their strategies to make you do that might be different and the executions will certainly vary. Just look at the new Note 9 phone from Samsung that comes just weeks before the next iPhones. For years, the Note line has been Samsung’s anti-thesis to the iPhone. While the iPhone enshrines minimalist elegance/vanity, the Note series has been the uber-advanced do-it-all device so crammed to the extreme that it just blows up sometimes. Next year, the Korean maker is rumoured to deliver something even daring — the first foldable smartphone that would allow for an even larger display and all the improved applications that allows.

While in rich countries the market for their products is maturing, meaning they will only benefit from stealing each other’s customers, in emerging markets like China and India, they both face the same challenge: of persuading people to trade up from budget offerings.

The Samsung and Apple war comes down to multiple fronts. And while hardware that wows could seem to some as the most important one, many see the software ecosystem fight as the clincher. iOS vs Android, Apple Music vs Spotify, Apple Pay vs Samsung Pay — you get the idea. Add to this the competing virtual assistants Siri and Bixby, both of which want to be one-stop all platform for everyday errands, tasks and voice commands.

Of course, cutting-edge and ever-alluring hardware is not to be discounted. Apple and Samsung will continue to try and outdo each other in making displays that push greater boundaries, processors that whack through games like knives and more RAM that handles app-juggling like a boss — all this in a package that gets increasingly shiny and attractive.

The two companies will also try and win the war of augmented reality which has other hardened players like Google and Microsoft.