Apple Rests its Case ⇥ theverge.com

There are a bunch of interesting numbers in Bryan Bishop’s article for The Verge. He has been doing an incredible job covering this trial. Let’s jump right in:

Apple finished up its case against Samsung today after calling a financial expert to the stand today who estimated that Cupertino may have lost 2 million iPhone and iPad sales due to the alleged infringement. […]

In putting together the total, Musika looked at three different buckets: the profits Samsung made with the accused products, reasonable royalty fees for the allegedly-infringed patents, and the profits Apple itself may have lost. Using demand and the presence of other products in the marketplace as a barometer, Musika estimated that Apple lost around 2 million mobile device sales, at a cost of $488.8 million.

It’s interesting that, while that’s a lot of money and a bunch of devices, it’s not a huge number. Hayley Tsukayama reports for the Washington Post:

Apple, meanwhile, has sold a total of 85 million iPhones in the U.S. since 2007 launch and 34 million iPads since 2010.

That’s a combined total of 119 million devices. Apple is arguing that they could have sold 121 million.

More big numbers from Bryan Bishop’s reporting:

All told, Musika presented a spread of between $2.5 billion and $2.75 billion in damages, depending on whether Apple’s lost profits are included.

Apple has paid Musika’s 20-person team around $1.75 million to reach the numbers he presented today.

I’m still wary of these numbers. Unlike market analysts, I don’t think Musika’s team has pulled these numbers out of their ass. But this argument is based on no more than calculated guesses, obviously.

After Apple wrapped up their argument, Samsung successfully negotiated dropping three devices from the trial, as they were all international variants which were never sold in the US.