Samsung admits it copied MS and Apple

Korean electronics giant Samsung has admitted that it plagiarised parts of the user interface design for one of its phones from Apple and Microsoft, the Korean press reported Sunday.

The Korean Times reported that Samsung has now changed the designs used in its latest handset model “Skin” after the revelation.

The practice was spotted by several online forums, according to the Times, when the new handset hit Korean shops in late April. It has an identical icon to Apple’s iMac PC icon. Samsung also stole designs from icons used by Microsoft in its Messenger product.

The ‘Skin’ models using the stolen graphics are the SCH-V890 and SPH-V8900. Both were released last month.

The phones have now been recalled from retailers according to Samsung and a software update is being made available for people who had already bought one of the handsets using the copied icons.

“There were a few mistakes while we were developing the new product… We have already fixed the designs and I believe that the old models are not being sold in the market anymore,” the chief of Samsung’s corporate design centre told the Korea Times.

Microsoft is investigating the issue.

Tags: Apple, Microsoft, Samsung

This entry was posted on May 09th, 2006 and is filed under Brands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.