It remains to be seen whether the court will issue the injunction against Samsung selling many of its products in the US, as Apple has requested. But if issued, that would only directly impact Samsung and those who desire a particular Samsung device in the near future.
One potential long term impact for all of us could be increased innovation. With companies on notice that patent infringement can be very costly indeed, it could make it less expensive to develop one's own ideas instead of repackaging those of others. Perhaps that will mean capital that would otherwise be expended on reverse engineering the products of competitors will be spend on research and development.
I doubt there will be much impact on the smartphone market in many ways. Most of what was found to be infringing was the user interface, not the underlying OS. Windows Phones and BlackBerries use distinctive UIs that are very different than Apple's so we know it isn't necessary to clone Apple's UI. There will likely be changes on some of the manufacturers' UIs running on top of the vanilla UI, but to be honest, in most cases I prefer the vanilla UI anyway.
Answer
It remains to be seen whether the court will issue the injunction against Samsung selling many of its products in the US, as Apple has requested. But if issued, that would only directly impact Samsung and those who desire a particular Samsung device in the near future.
One potential long term impact for all of us could be increased innovation. With companies on notice that patent infringement can be very costly indeed, it could make it less expensive to develop one's own ideas instead of repackaging those of others. Perhaps that will mean capital that would otherwise be expended on reverse engineering the products of competitors will be spend on research and development.
I doubt there will be much impact on the smartphone market in many ways. Most of what was found to be infringing was the user interface, not the underlying OS. Windows Phones and BlackBerries use distinctive UIs that are very different than Apple's so we know it isn't necessary to clone Apple's UI. There will likely be changes on some of the manufacturers' UIs running on top of the vanilla UI, but to be honest, in most cases I prefer the vanilla UI anyway.