Despite the smartphone industry growing at a rapid pace, and the phone launch events only becoming grander in scale, over the years, the charm of these events has greatly reduced. However, it's not due to the ever-increasing number of smartphones every day, rather because of the constant flow of leaks in the days or months leading up to the launch of a device that these mega-events have started to feel a lot less exciting.
In recent times, these leaks have become so revealing that they leave little to the imagination about the device by the time it's officially introduced to the world. I mean when is the last time a product announcement caught you off guard? And that's the reason companies like Apple, Samsung, and even Xiaomi are coming after people who leak their products.
It started with Apple when they sent a legal letter to some prominent Apple leakers. They even sent a legal letter to Concept creator who actually is not even a leaker in the first place, he just makes concept videos from the information he gets off of these leakers, basically a freelancer. A few days later Xiaomi decides to follow suit. This company copies Apple left and right, so how could they not follow their mentor here. So Xiaomi sent a legal letter to this guy who leaked the pricing and specifications of an upcoming Poco device. Today, Samsung is copyright striking images and videos of people who leaked their products. Unlike Apple and Xiaomi, Samsung isn't just being an outright bully and sending legal letters to these people threatening them to sue them if they leak their products in the future, but Samsung is taking down images from Twitter and videos from YouTube which leaked their upcoming products, I mean those official marketing materials.
Now how do I feel about this? Well, I have mixed feelings. I totally get why companies are pissed. Sometimes leaks give the competition privileged information about new products. For example AirTags, almost one and a half, two years ago we got a leak in the form of renders that Apple is working on AirTags. So what did Samsung do? They launched AirTags of their own called Smarttags well before Apple officially unveiled it to the world.
But the plus side of leaks outweighs the negatives. I mean it helps people get excited about the product. It's basically a free advertisement for these companies, it keeps people thinking about their product. The whole thing is called marketing. And most importantly it helps the user to make a better and informed decision whether or not to wait for the next product.
Also, some “leaks” are actually organized by the companies themselves to test the market’s reaction to a new product before the final release, to do some last-minute tweaks to that particular device. So just like everything in the world, leaks do have positive and negative prospects.
But going after these leakers who are just acting like a mediator is being a bully in my opinion. If Apple hates these leaks so much then why not control their own employees to not share sensitive information with these people. They need to look inside. That’s where these leaks are coming from. And Apple is already taking some action by asking a few of its employees to wear body cameras at work to prevent leaks.
Now coming to Samsung, if they wanted to stop leaks they could have done it already. I mean Samsung kept the original Galaxy Fold so secret that not a single image of the handset was leaked, and nobody knew how it was supposed to look and about its features. So them now copyright striking videos is kinda weird.
Also, some people might argue that leaks are spoiling the fun of product reveals which is kinda funny because it’s a phone, not a Marvel movie. Besides, you could just decide not to watch videos, articles mentioning unreleased products and get really excited for that one day of the year.
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