Samsung and Google Reschedule Android Event for Oct. 19 in Hong Kong
Samsung and Google have rescheduled the Ice Cream Sandwich launch event that was to have taken place this past Tuesday. The companies postponed the event in the wake of Steve Jobs's death.
Context & Ripple Effects
Six days after Samsung and Google postponed the Galaxy Nexus launch out of respect for Steve Jobs, the two companies have put a new date on the calendar: October 19 in Hong Kong, where Ice Cream Sandwich and the next Nexus phone are expected to debut. The original postponement was itself unusual — consumer-tech rivals rarely shelve a flagship launch for a competitor founder's death — so the reschedule closes an awkward gap in the Android holiday-season run-up.
First-order effects
- Samsung gets a firm stage for its Galaxy Nexus debut, but it now launches its flagship weeks after U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ruled that Samsung's Galaxy tablets infringe Apple's iPad patents — putting the new device in front of press already primed on the litigation.
- Google uses the rescheduled event as its counter-programming moment against Apple, with the added option of using the Hong Kong stage for the rumored MP3 store it is said to be negotiating with major record labels.
Second-order effects
- Apple's Australian legal win built on a posthumous Steve Jobs touchscreen-heuristics patent raises the stakes for every Galaxy product Samsung shows on October 19, pushing Samsung's launch messaging toward design differentiation it can defend in court.
- Amazon's Kindle Fire, launched into the same holiday window, now competes directly against a refreshed Android flagship plus a possible Google music storefront — compressing pricing and content-bundling decisions for all three into a single quarter.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Android's competitive identity becomes explicitly defined against a post-Jobs Apple: courtroom rulings and tribute-timed scheduling alike signal that the smartphone platform war will be fought through patents and launch-calendar positioning as much as hardware specs.
The trend: The Android-Apple contest is entering a phase where launch events, patent rulings, and media-store ecosystems are coordinated weapons rather than separate fronts.