[amartya916]

I also read that Best Buy had people returning the Galaxy Tab because they had originally thought that it was the iPad.

Link: http://allthingsd.com/20120726/documents-in-apple-v-samsung-...

Now, of course one can say that the consumer should have paid more attention to the branding, but I think that's missing the point. It seems that for a few (?) people the Galaxy tab looked similar enough to the iPad to cause confusion and that the big box retailer conveyed the message to Samsung.

[jsnell]

That data point doesn't mean much. Many people who aren't into tech will just lump a whole category of devices together with the most prominent member of the group. I suspect it's impossible to design a tablet-like device with any commercial potential at all that someone won't confuse for an iPad.

For example, I've had someone call my original Eee Transformer an iPad. And here we're talking of a device that's a different color (brown), different texture (smooth vs. crosshatched), different shape (16:10 vs. 4:3), and much thicker. Oh, and of course attached to a keyboard...

[amartya916]

If I understand your point correctly, you are referring to the fact that some products by being first-to-market or by popularity start to define a category of products. For example, vacuum cleaners in the UK are mostly called "Hoovers", or say "Coke" represents a cola soft drink etc.

In those cases, people won't buy a product and return it. Although they refer to a vacuum cleaner as a "Hoover", they go in knowing fully well that they are buying a product that does what a "Hoover" does, i.e. pick up dust. Here people didn't go in wanting an iPad-esque product and buying a product in the same category, but rather they mistook it to be the iPad. Pardon me if this seems a little circuitous, having trouble with words today :)