Inside "Magna Carta Holy Grail" with JAY Z + Samsung

Samsung to Give Away 1 Million Copies of Jay-Z’s New Album

By Hannah Karp

Getty Images

Jay-Z on February 17, 2013 in Houston, Texas.

As the Miami Heat faced off against the San Antonio Spurs in Game 5 of the NBA finals Sunday night, a curious TV ad aired near the end of the second quarter featuring rap star Jay-Z in a studio, riffing with a cast of characters including producer Rick Rubin and artist Pharrell Williams. At one point, a member of the posse is shown taking notes on a tablet device. More than two minutes into the three-minute video Samsung Electronics Co. 005930.SE +0.51%’s tagline flashes across the screen: “The Next Big Thing.”

The connection: Samsung has purchased 1 million copies of Jay-Z’s coming album, entitled “Magna Carta Holy Grail,” slated for release July 4, and plans to give them to Samsung Galaxy smartphone users for free – 72 hours ahead of the release. The users are to receive the music through an app they’ll receive later this month. (Recipients won’t be able to share it until the official release date.)

Samsung paid $5 apiece for the albums, according to a person familiar with the matter. It wasn’t immediately clear if Nielsen SoundScan will count Samsung’s purchases in its sales tallies.

The partnership could help Samsung compete with Apple Inc. AAPL -1.36%, which recently announced the launch of iTunes Radio – an online radio service bundled onto Apple devices that promises to offer listeners access to certain tracks before they’re available elsewhere.

For Jay-Z, the deal is a precious advertising opportunity and gives him $5 million in sales before the album is even released. The agreement signals the increasing importance of corporate sponsors to the music industry, which has seen sales tank over the past decade.

Jay-Z hinted at the partnership on Twitter two days ago with a photo of a Samsung smartphone displaying text telling fans to “tune in” to the game.

Neither Samsung nor Jay-Z could immediately be reached for comment.

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Industrial design expert on why Samsung is the copyist

Samsung has been called the copyist by Apple many times over, the first time in court documents the iPhone maker filed as part of patent infringement claims brought against its frenemy in April of 2011.

But evidence is mounting that Samsung slavishly copied some areas of the iPhone experience, like the iPhone’s gorgeous icons.

On Monday, Apple brought in an expert to testify before a northern California court where the iPhone and Galaxy makerslocked horns in the patent trial of the century…

Peter Bressler is a former president of the Industrial Designers Society and the founder and board chair of product design firm Bresslergroup.

Himself an inventor credited with inventing or co-inventing about 70 patents, Bressler testified today that, in his opinion, Samsung did in fact lift Apple’s designs for a few of its own smartphones and tablets.

He said, according to CNET‘s Josh Lowensohn:

My opinion (is) that there are a number of Samsung phones and two Samsungtablets that are substantially the same as the design in those (Apple) patents.

And what might those patents be?

According to The Verge:

One of the iPhone patents covers the flat, front face of the device while the other protects its rounded corners and the bezel Apple that ditched with the iPhone 4 design. The third design patent protects the iPad’s rounded corners, flat face, and the thin black border beneath the glass on the front of the tablet.

He went on further to opine that uninformed would-be buyers could easily confuse Samsung’s Galaxy-branded smartphones and tablet with Apple’s iPhone and iPad.

It’s my opinion that this phone, the design of this phone would be considered substantially the same when viewed by regular consumers.

His opinion especially pertains to Samsung’s first and second-generation Galaxy S smartphones.

What makes Bressler qualified to make such assessments?

According to his own words:

Industrial designers are trained to pay attention to a lot of the little details that work together to form the overall impression that the usual consumer would view. So (consumers) may see those details, but they tend to be somewhat subconscious to the overall view.

It was also discovered in the courtroom last week that an internal email circulated at Samsung following the iPhone’s debut five years ago, in which Samsung’s executives described the iPhone as causing a “crisis of design” at the company.

According to Forbes, the email message reads:

All this time we’ve been paying all our attention to Nokia, and concentrated our efforts on things like Folder, Bar, Slide, yet when our [product] is compared to the unexpected competitor Apple’s iPhone, the difference is truly that of Heaven and Earth.

It’s a crisis of design.

I also love this bit from Samsung’s email message:

When everybody (both consumers and the industry talk about [user experience], they weight it against the iPhone, the iPhone has becomes the standard.

That’s how things are already.

Asked by Apple’s attorney William Lee about its contents, chief strategy officer Justin Denison tried to downplay internal communication by calling it Samsung’s“hyperbolic” management style, to which Lee pointed out that the only documents that refer to a crisis in design refer to the iPhone.

In other legal news, Samsung also broke rules by taking witnesses to see the courtroom.

As this litigation drags out, Samsung is planning to launch the 10.1-inch Galaxy Note tablet later this month as it tries to solidify its position as the leading vendor of Android tablets, seen right above.

And here’s the promo clip.

Building upon the original 5.3-inch Galaxy Note phablet, the upcoming Galaxy Note 10.1 is driven by Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and sports a 10.1-inch 1280-by-800 pixelsdisplay and a pen meant to “elevate a user’s creativity and productivity”.

It also has a 1.4GHz quad-core chip with 2GB of RAM, a five-megapixel back camera and a 1.9-megapixel one out the front. WiFi and cellular models will be offered, with threestorage options ( 16/32/64GB).

Samsung is also slated to update the 5.3-inch phablet with a 0.2 inch larger display and refreshed internals at a media event on August 29, two weeks before the next iPhoneannouncement.

Looks like it’s gonna be a busy fall, with the new iPhone coming and just about everyone else scrambling to spoil Apple’s party by outing their hero devices.

So, would you say that you tech illiterate friends might confuse Samsung’s Galaxy gear to Apple’s?

New images try to prove that Samsung copied Apple’s icons

As we begin week two of the high-profile patent trial between Apple and Samsung, we’re starting to see a lot more evidence submitted by both companies. And this next bit, filed by Apple, is particularly interesting.

In court today, Apple’s legal team presented 6 images to the jury that it believes proves that Samsung intentionally copied its iOS icons for use in its TouchWiz interface it installs in all of its popular Android handsets…

Handset-makers put these layers over Android to separate their devices from the competition (HTC has its Sense UI). But Apple believes that Samsung’s TouchWiz interface doesn’t make it unique, it makes it a copycat.

From the green Phone icon, to the purple Music icon with the eighth note and CD graphic, Apple makes a pretty compelling case. Even if you argue that graphics like a person’s silhouette or a gear have become universal symbols for Address Books and Settings apps, there’s no denying that Samsung’s designers got some inspiration from iOS here. If you’re looking for more proof, CNET has obtained all 6 images.

Apple’s done a great job thus far, outlining the many different ways it feels that Samsung has copied its products. But the trial is far from over. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how the jury interprets all of this evidence in the end.

What do you think? Did Samsung copy Apple’s icons?