Articles about Samsung

The transpiring events of Apple’s lawsuit against Samsung divides the technology industry and hones in on several overarching intellectual property talking points and issues that far extend the perpetual "eye for an eye" battle the companies occupy. Many writers and pundits state that the lawsuit will be a primary stepping stone to IP and patent reform and will be a primary decider of the future of patent law in the technology industry.

What the trial really rises to the surface: the two differing approaches with which Apple and Samsung view the situation. Apple’s perspective hinges on protecting the intrinsic and unique value of their intellectual property, whereas Samsung focuses more on the end game of consumer perception.

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BetaNews certainly loves the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Joe Wilcox uses one, Tim Conneally uses one, now I use one. I wanted a smartphone that could easily deal with day-to-day tasks, had decent enough battery life that could get me through the day, had good build quality, and most importantly, received timely software updates.

As some of you may have already read, my Galaxy Nexus came with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, but I managed to update it to Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean. I wanted to experience it without the placebo effect induced by claims of a faster interface. So how does it stand up to my four criteria?

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Answer: One-hundred percent of all profits gained from Sammy's smartphones and injunction barring sales of future models. Is that clear enough for you? Because it might not be from the stilted news stories about the Apple-Samsung trial under way here in California. Apple feels entitled to everything. That's how highly the company's top-brass thinks about their intellectual property and how little they do about Samsung's.

Instead of reading about how much Apple demands, blogs and news reports focus on the puny 2.4 percent per phone Samsung asks Apple for so-called essential patents or the extent of copying as told by the fruit-logo company. The story you read everyday about the Apple-Samsung trial is a good yarn, but there's enough urban legend to warrant a Snopes.com entry.

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Modders everywhere rejoice: CyanogenMod 9 (CM9) is now a “stable” release for popular Android smartphones, according to a blog post by CyanogenMod team. CyanogenMod 9 is developed from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), having Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich as its starting point.

The guys behind the project announced that the stable release “will be the end of the line for the ICS branch” and that they will only fix critical bugs from now on. As well, the team will focus only on CyanogenMod 10 and maintaining the CyanogenMod 7 (based on Android 2.3 Gingerbread) codebase. The other great piece of news comes from the development on CyanogenMod 10, which is based on Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean.

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The Galaxy S III is currently Samsung’s flagship smartphone and one of the best Android devices on the market today. To top it off, the Korean manufacturer has announced that the Galaxy S III will get VoLTE (Voice over LTE) starting August 2012 in Korea, which will be followed by "availability in global LTE markets" according to an announcement from the company on Thursday.

If the buyers of the Samsung Galaxy S III LTE model haven’t got the same quad-core processor or video card to play with (unless they’re in Korea), they now have VoLTE to play with which is exclusive to the LTE model.

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We’re only into the second week of the "patent trial of the century" but we’ve already been granted an unprecedented peek behind the curtain into the notoriously secretive world of Apple Inc. Here, in no particular order, are ten of the most fascinating reveals from the trial to date.

Steve Jobs was open to the idea of a seven inch iPad

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At the moment, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the only Android smartphone that can be experienced the way Google wants. Of course, there were previous Nexus iterations like the Nexus S and Nexus One, but with the Galaxy Nexus, Google got it right. Well, right enough that I recently bought one.

Your first days with any new device are the honeymoon. There’s the initial joy of opening the package and peeling off the plastic sheets on both sides and looking inside the box for accessories. Then, the battery is in its rightful place, the back cover is on, and at a touch of the power button the SAMOLED displays "Google." Things get interesting, the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich animation pops up, I run through the initial set up and bang, I am now using my new shiny Galaxy Nexus.

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As manufacturers release upgrades to Android 4.0, and people buy Ice Cream Sandwich-based smartphones, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) accounts for 15.9 percent market share of the Android operating system family, which is the highest distribution level since its introduction in October 2011. This statistic is provided by Google based upon the number of devices accessing Google Play within a 14-day period up to August 1. Net Applications rates ICS at an even higher percentage of the Android market.

Android 4.0.3 to 4.0.4 account for 15.8 percent Android market share, a whopping 99.37 percent of the Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich deployment. After the release of popular Android smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S III running Android 4.0.4 or HTC One X running Android 4.0.3 as well as the updates to Android 4.0.4 to Sony Xperia S, Samsung Galaxy S II to Android 4.0.3, Motorola RAZR MAXX to Android 4.0.4, the update of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus to 4.0.4 on Verizon and GSM owners who haven’t yet updated to 4.1 and to other older devices, ICS 4.0.3-4.0.4 is justifiably more popular than Android 4.0-4.0.2, which is now just a speck in its rear view mirror.

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Who would have guessed that it was time for the smartphone market to take a breath and slow down before the second half of 2012? Strategy Analytics released a report analyzing the U.S. smartphone market and shipments for Q2 2012, focusing on the two biggest smartphone operating systems, Android and iOS. The results make for an unexpected scenario: has the smartphone market reached its peak and if so, who’s the winning platform?

The Strategy Analytics report posts a decrease on smartphone shipment growth year-over-year with a 70.1 percent increase in 2011 and a 5.4 percent decrease for 2012, calling for a comparison with the report made available by IDC, which focuses on worldwide sales and market share. The differences between global results and those in the U.S. only suggest the U.S. market might have reached its peak, while worldwide smartphones are enjoying better sales.

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Like I wrote two days ago, "iPhone sales are slowing", all while Samsung's increase. Today, IDC released calendar second-quarter smartphone shipments, and Samsung and ZTE took share from every other major manufacturer, including Apple. Let's be clear: iPhone doesn't typically lose share. It's a persistent gainer. Well, that is, until now.

Apple shipments into the channel increased by 27.5 percent year over year to 26 million units from 20.4 million. But global market share fell to 16.9 percent from 18.8 percent a year earlier. Meanwhile, Samsung smartphone shipments surged 172.8 percent to 50 million units from 18.4 million. Market share rose to 32.6 percent from 17 percent a year earlier. Quarter on quarter, Apple share fell from 24.2 percent, erasing most of the gains following the iPhone 4S launch last autumn. Meanwhile, Samsung rose from 29.1 percent.

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I'm out of the office today attending Freshman orientation with my daughter. We were at San Diego State University for day-long lectures a month ago, but I saw something today either missed before or that is new (I'm convinced it's the latter). The East Commons has two Samsung charging stations that promote Galaxy S II and S3. It's simply brilliant marketing.

Think about it. Education is considered to be an Apple stronghold; some of that is reality, some perception. Two days ago, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said about fiscal Q3: "We achieved all time record Mac sales to US education institutions during the quarter. We sold more than twice as many iPads as Macs to US education institutions. We are extremely pleased with these results".

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Now here’s an interesting thing. A couple of days ago Samsung disabled the Google local search function from the international version of its Galaxy S3 handset, preventing users from being able to search their phone’s apps and contacts. It was believed to have been done as a result of a patent dispute with Apple, and followed the search-on-device disabling update that hit Galaxy Nexuses in the US.

Users were understandably up in arms because they weren’t told that installing the new stability update would remove the universal search feature, and probably a fair few of them felt compelled to join the boycott Apple movement as a result. (Fortunately I didn’t update my S3 so my opinion didn’t change. Not that it would have.)

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Apple is one of the most important companies in the world of consumer technology and one that has changed the destiny of the smartphone and the tablet. It came as a big surprise when the Cupertino, California-based company announced the iPad more than two years ago. In 2010, Apple made waves with its first tablet generating $9.566 billion in revenue from the iPad alone, and in 2012 it's making headlines again with a smaller, seven inch tablet it hasn’t even announced yet.

In 2010 Apple had the market all to itself, with the iPad dominating 83 percent of the tablet market. Why? The iPad wasn't designed to have the most cutting edge software or hardware in terms of features or speed, but it was conceived to offer easy-to-use software with hardware to match it, wrapped in a good looking package. It sold 14.789 million units in 2010 alone, so it's clear the idea caught on. The original iPad was released in a time when tablets weren't as popular as they are today, and despite previous efforts by Microsoft with the TabletPC, they never caught up. So what's changed?

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According to the Bloomsberg News Agency a UK judge has ordered Apple to publish a notice on its website and in various newspapers and magazines (the Financial Times, the Daily Mail, Guardian Mobile magazine, and T3) informing visitors and readers that Samsung did not copy the design of the iPad. The judge, Colin Birss, also stipulated that the notice on Apple’s website should remain there for a minimum of six months.

The order follows Apple’s failed attempt to block sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab tablets in the United Kingdom and is apparently intended to correct any damaging impressions consumers may have been given about the South Korean company as a result of the litigation.

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In a rather unexpected move, Samsung Mobile Display Co. is throwing a corporate espionage bomb, by accusing LG of stealing and leaking OLED technology secrets. The news comes as a shock indeed, because if found guilty of orchestrating it the consequences can be disastrous for LG.

Eleven people were indicted Sunday on charges of leaking or stealing core OLED technology from Samsung. The list also includes executives from LG, which currently trails Samsung as the second largest LCD panel manufacturer in the world. To top off bad news with more bad news, it is reported that six more suspects were formerly or currently working for Samsung.

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