- Samsung South Africa has unsuccessfully argued that the Galaxy S7 wasn’t a phone.
- The company wanted to reclassify the phone for tax refunds.
Smartphones have become incredibly versatile and can surf the Internet, run a variety of apps, play multimedia, and take photos and videos. Basically they are still cell phones, but Samsung South Africa has tried unsuccessfully to argue otherwise.
Samsung unsuccessfully campaigned in a South African court to define the Galaxy S7 as a device more like a laptop or PC than a smartphone MoneyWeb reported.
The dispute over the definition of the device was reportedly due to Samsung filing customs refunds with the South African Revenue Service (Sars). South Africa classifies smartphones as luxury goods that have increased tariffs.
Arguments for a counter-classification
The Korean manufacturer brought in an IT specialist who argued that voice calls were not the main purpose of phones like the Galaxy S7. Instead, he claimed that apps, internet connection, social media, music and games could be the main function.
Even so, Sars argued that the Galaxy S7 was a phone for a number of reasons. These include that it is small enough to be carried in the hand, a speaker and microphone are arranged like you would see them on a phone, a SIM slot for connecting to cellular networks for calls, a software Keyboard and the ability to receive and end calls. The tax authority also said you could still make calls on WhatsApp and Skype.
Sars has clearly done his homework here when Judge Nomonde Mngqibisa-Thusi dismissed Samsung’s case with costs:
“The applicant’s claim that the product is not a cellular phone but a machine that resembles a laptop or desktop is disingenuous, as the applicant has admitted that its product has telephony capabilities. The fact that the product has functions in laptops and desktops does not detract from its primary function of being a cellular phone. “
SamMobile Also, it was rightly pointed out that the Galaxy S7 doesn’t support Dex functionality, which gives you a PC-like experience when connected to a big screen. So it’s not that Samsung could have relied on this feature to argue that the device looks more like a traditional computer. Would it actually have made a difference?