Apple, Samsung to end patent war outside US

After a period of prolonged hostility, tech giants Apple and Samsung are talking truce over their outstanding mutual patent litigations outside the US.

While the companies would withdraw ongoing legal proceedings regarding patent infringement outside of the US, ongoing cases in US courts would proceed for now. Besides the US, the two companies are fighting legal battles over patent issues in  Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, and the UK.

The move by both companies suggests Apple and Samsung may well strike a licensing agreement for their respective technologies according to commentators.

The two have been locked in litigation since 2011 when Apple sued Samsung for alleged infringement on Apple patents with Samsung's popular Galaxy line of Android smartphones.

However, even as the companies faced each other off in courts, Samsung went on to sell more smartphones globally than Apple, which had introduced the iPhone in 2007, to set off the new smartphone era.

Samsung would however still be appealing a 2012 US court ruling awarding Apple $930 million in damages for patent infringement. Apple too would pursue a sales ban on specific Samsung devices in a separate US lawsuit.

Meanwhile trouble is brewing for Samsung on another front. The second quarter, saw Samsung lose its grip in leading growth markets China and India, and also post a sharp drop in company profits.

The recent reverses serve to highlight the inherent pitfall in Samsung's strategy built around selling a phone to everyone regardless of budget or geography, even as price competition hurt margins. It may be time for Samsung's management to rethink its strategy, especially in markets driven by prices, according to commentators.

Jackdaw Research analyst Jan Dawson said, Samsung was for some time the default option if one wanted to buy an Android phone, however Chinese competitors were coming in, undercutting on price, and producing very effective devices, CNET reported.

With slowing appetite for smartphones in markets like the US and Western Europe, Apple and Samsung, would need to focus on China, India, and Brazil to drive growth.

ARM Holdings -- the company whose chip technology powered, the vast majority of the world's mobile devices, projects shipments of 1 billion low-end smartphones in 2018, as against 550 million mid-range and 250 million premium smartphones.