[francoisfeugeas]

> It's perfectly clear to anyone who has watched Samsung > over the years that they're the Burger King of consumer > electronics. They let the market leader do the R&D and > then slavishly imitate their successes.

We may not be watching the same company then : Samsung invests over 6 billion USD per year in R&D, approx. 9% of its revenue (Apple does 2.2%).

Sure, on some markets Samsung acts more as a "fast follower" than as as innovator, but to call it the "Burger King of consumer electronics" is plain ridiculous.

[bluekeybox]

I'm sure Samsung innovates in some aspects such as chip and low-power circuit design etc., but I think it is very clear to everyone that they chose not to innovate in terms of visual design/form/appearance of their Galaxy tablet (the only people this may not be clear to are nerds for whom the difference between two similar hardware designs is as clear as the difference between black and white -- most normal people don't notice those things, which is why the problem of imitators exists in the first place). Whether that choice (to be different from the iPad or not) was intentional or not is a topic for a different discussion, though only a fool would think it was unintentional.

There is an unspoken rule among designers: it is okay to be inspired by someone else, but you almost have an "obligation" to make your design appear different in some way from the design you are inspired by. Once you break that rule, you look like a cheat, and I or anyone who cares about design/original thinking has no sympathy for cheats.