Apple Makes an Apology to Samsung by Not Really Making an Apology

Last July Apple lost a case it filed in a UK court. The patent infringement charge alleges that Samsung has copied the designs of the iPad and has used it in designing Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 Android tablet. The judge ruled that Apple should apologize to Samsung in the form of a statement that Apple should put up on the Apple website.

A couple of weeks ago, Apple finally complied with the court’s decision after it lost an appeal to overturn the decision.

But the apology page was not what everyone expected.

The terms of the apology were already changed during the appeals process. With the duration it should be posted on the Apple site reduced from six months to one month and the location in the site removed from the home page to anywhere Apple wanted to place it.

Apple did put up that apology statement but in a page that is devoid of any Apple branding that it doesn’t even look like the page is within the Apple site unless you look at the URL. But more than the page is the apology – it was mean-spirited, to say the least, and was as far from an apology as anyone can do it.

The court has already rejected this attempt made by Apple and has asked them to try again.

Issuing an apology statement on your own website is a bitter pill to swallow but it should also be a lesson in humility. What Apple has done was just show its ugly side as a company. It has acted like a spoiled brat when things don’t go their way. What they did may not actually affect their bottomline – the iPad is still the industry-leading tablet in the global market and their iPhone is a sought-after status symbol. Their corporate image though will definitely be affected by this, especially within the tech community that faithfully follows the tech industry.

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