The much hyped Samsung Galaxy Tab products are facing permanent banishment in some countries including European Countries and Australia. The product is already out of market in same countries and in others they are on their way to the trash can. The unavailability of the Galaxy Tab products is not attributed to high market demands, but a rather unusual thing! The Samsung Galaxy products are fast disappearing from the market because Apple though that they are not original enough.

The timing couldn’t have been worse for Samsung as it prepares to launch the next generation of android products – the S2 series. It all started when Apple decided to move court against Samsung saying that the company has violated the patent norms and copied the patented deigns of Apple to be used in the Galaxy products. The Galaxy products are remarkably similar to the iPad range of products and Apple feels that Samsung is spoiling its market by selling copied products. The courts have so far agreed to Apple’s thoughts and Samsung has been forced to withdraw products from the market.

So far the company has been successful in shrugging off competition from the European and Australian markets, but with the International Trade Commission looking into the matter now, things could get worse and the products could be banned from the U.S also. The Samsung products getting tangled in legal issues however do not mean that Samsung line of products would never again be able to see daylight; they could always go back and redesign the hardware in a  way that the usability and features remain intact but the design steers clear of Apple’s patented designs.

In any case it’s the android platform that attracts users to these products, so a minor tweak and twist here and there in the hardware could solve the issue for Samsung. However, if Apple sues hard enough and forces Samsung to steer clear of anything “android”, there could a possibility of Samsung being forced to drop the Galaxy tab forever. That however, is a very remote possibility and there’s nothing to point to that right now. Critics believe that danger is looming large on Samsung and if things take a wrong turn, as they did for HTC, Samsung might be in deep soup. HTC did get mired in legal woes earlier and had to offer its shareholders a stock buyback program to reassure them that it was not going to go out of business.