Samsung Electronics stopped selling its popular Galaxy Tab slates in Australia due to a court order. Apple, which accused Samsung of patents infringement, asked the court to order Samsung to stop selling Galaxy Tab devices until the patent lawsuit is fully resolved.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1" infringes ten Apple patents, including the "look and feel", and touch-screen technology of the Apple iPad, Steven Burley, a lawyer for Apple, told Federal Court Justice Annabelle Bennett, reports Bloomberg news-agency. Apple is also seeking to stop Samsung selling its popular Google Android-based tablets in other countries, including the U.S., but the South Korea-based company denies that it infringes any patents.

The latest Samsung Galaxy Tab slates are powered by a dual-core ARM system-on-chip (Nvidia Tegra 2 with high-performance GeForce integrated graphics), are equipped with 8.9” or 10.1" multi-touch LCD screens with 1280*800 resolution; 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of flash storage; USB 2.0, Wi-Fi 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and HSPA+/EDGE/GPRS connectivity. The new slates feature a 3MP rear camera and a 2MP front camera. There are also Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1V flavour of the 10.1" slate with 8MP camera, but in thicker form-factor. At present only the 10.1V version is expected to be sold in Australia. The latest tablets are based on Android 3.0/3.1 operating system.

The sales ban of Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1V will help Apple to ensure that its iPad-series slates will remain the most popular tablets in the country and will lack any competition.

The issue can be resolved on August 29, 2011, at the earliest. It is highly likely that the actual decision will be made later, which means that the Australian court has just helped Apple to virtually monopolize the market of slates in the country for several months.

Tags: Samsung, Galaxy, Galaxy Tab, Apple, iPad, Android, Google