July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Samsung gets a lot of flack for aping Apples’ hardware design, but it does its share of copying on the software end, too.

The Korean electronics company is taking the wraps off of Wallet, its ticket management app that’s almost painfully reminiscent of Apple’s Passbook, which it announced last June.

Like Passbook, Wallet stores movie tickets, boarding passes, and membership cards from a central, digital hub. The app also has location-based push notifications, so alerting you when you’re at a place where you can use the stashed digital coupons.

Samsung plans to offer an open API for the app, so third parties can plug in and expand its functionality. (MLB, Walgreens, Hotels.com, and others have already been announced as partners.) It’s all very Passbook-sounding.

The similarities to Apple’s app even extend Wallet’s icon, which looks a whole lot like Passbook’s. Samsung has landed in hot water over this kind of stuff before, so it’s a bit disconcerting to see that little has changed.

The good news here? Samsung phone owners finally have their own answer to Passbook — though who knows if Samsung will open the app up to the larger Android ecosystem. Perhaps Google has created a monster after all.

The video below (found via The Verge) gives you a good sense of how closely Wallet resembles Passbook.

Top photo:Twitter/stroughtonsmith