Samsung & Apple May Reach Deal On Australian Tablet Sales

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It’s a strange thing watching lawyers go at it. One day you’re watching Apple and Samsung go for each others’ throats like starving dogs who’ve recently drank a whole lot of Red Bull and now, at least on the Australian front, everything’s all nice and quiet. Reports are coming in of a secret deal made between Samsung and Apple that would allow Samsung to actually sell the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia, with Apple’s blessing.

The exact details of the deal are unclear at this time, but whatever it is, it seems to be working. Apple’s lawyers have said they’ll need to consider the deal, and should it go off Samsung’s “inconvenience would be lessened” and Apple, for its part “would be comforted”. Both sides were set to conclude their arguments in a New South Wales court today, and as Monday, October 4th, is a state holiday there, the hearing is set to resume. But should this deal actually go down, the hearing may well stop that day too.

At last report, Samsung had agreed to remove two features from the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 that infringed on Apple’s patents, which left only one disputed point left, the big one that is the touch screen technology.

It certainly got me wondering what Samsung offered up to make such a deal happen. Considering that Samsung has something of a club in its hand already via their 3G patents in Europe that Apple is still trying to argue off as FRAND technologies, maybe they agreed to a bit of quid pro quo on that front. Strictly speculative, of course, but Apple killing Samsung’s touch screens then Samsung killing Apple’s 3G capability in response would have left the both of them with pretty badly off product, and going into the holiday shopping frenzies, well, neither could afford that.

Hopefully we’ll be hearing more about the secret Samsung / Apple deal soon, but until then, it’s fair game for speculation! What do you think went into the deal? Cash settlements? Royalty fees? A dropped lawsuit elsewhere? No matter what your opinion on this one is, we welcome it down in the comments section below!