Samsung Says Its Next Smartphones Will Have 64-Bit Processors

Following Apple's announcement of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c, Samsung has announced that it plans to release a smartphone with a 64-bit processor and expand its business in China, reports the KoreaTimes. Samsung’s mobile business chief Shin Jong-kyun made the comments at a weekly meeting with chief executives of Samsung’s key affiliates in Seocho-dong, southern Seoul.

“Samsung understands that Apple intends to boost its mobile business in China, as well as in Japan, meaning that we should try harder in these countries,” Shin said.

“Apple believes that it can boost its market share in China thanks to stronger brand awareness. However, with better pricing, a diversified product lineup and solid partnerships with local channels, Samsung plans to keep its current momentum in China. We have no reason to allow Apple to steal market share from us,” said one low-ranking industry executive.

Samsung is top smartphone seller in China with 19.4% of the market. Apple has 4.3% of the market.

Shin also confirmed that Samsung would be releasing a smartphone with a 64-bit processor.

“Not in the shortest time. But yes, our next smartphones will have 64-bit processing functionality,” Shin said.



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Preliminary Injunction on Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Lifted

Judge Lucy Koh has lifted a preliminary injunction on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, reports The Verge.

Following a jury verdict that found Samsung did not infringe on Apple patents with its Galaxy Tab 10.1, the company has tried to have a ban on the device lifted. The ban was originally put in place by Judge Koh and was upheld by the appeals court.

Judge Koh stated in a September filing that she would dissolve the injunction if allowed -- but since Samsung had already appealed the preliminary injunction the matter was out of her jurisdiction. This past Friday the Federal US Circuit Court of Appeals kicked the case back down to Koh, opening the door to today's decision. Koh also stated that the court will be holding on to the $2.6 million bond Apple posted for the injunction until all post-trial matters are wrapped up.

The full order can be read at this link...


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Drop Test: Apple iPhone 5 vs. Samsung Galaxy S III [Video]

The first drop test video comparing the Apple iPhone 5 to the Samsung Galaxy S III has been posted by Android Authority.

This morning in Hong Kong, Darcy dropped the Galaxy S3 and the iPhone 5 a total of four times, each time from an increasing height. To make our drop test more realistic, we tried to recreate the accidents that happen most often in real life. We ruthlessly let the two devices fall to the hard pavement, just to see what happens. Needless to say, it wasn't pretty. See for yourselves. Dayum!

The hard aluminum shell of the iPhone 5 withstood the impact pretty well, and the glass protecting the display remained intact. Meanwhile, the Galaxy S3 predictably lost its back cover and suffered damage to the casing and the front glass. Sad, sad, sad.

Take a look at the video below!



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Samsung Lawyer Can't Tell iPad and Galaxy Tab Apart From 10Ft

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh held up both the iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Tab and asked Samsung lawyers to identify which was which during a hearing to determine whether Apple will win a preliminary injunction against the Samsung device, reports Reuters.

After being asked to identify which tablet was which, Samsung attorney Kathleen Sullivan answered, "Not at this distance your honor." She stood at a podium roughly ten feet away.

"Can any of Samsung's lawyers tell me which one is Samsung and which one is Apple?" Koh asked. A moment later, one of the lawyers supplied the right answer.

While Koh says that Samsung's Galaxy tab does infringe on Apple's iPad patents, she says that Apple has a problem establishing the validity of those patents.

Koh has yet to rule on Apple's request to bar the Galaxy Tab from being sold in the United States.






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Samsung Agrees to Pay Microsoft for Using Android

Microsoft announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement with Samsung, to cross-license the patent portfolios of both companies, providing broad coverage for each company's products. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will receive royalties for Samsung's mobile phones and tablets running the Android mobile platform. In addition, the companies agreed to cooperate in the development and marketing of Windows Phone.

"Microsoft and Samsung see the opportunity for dramatic growth in Windows Phone and we're investing to make that a reality," said Andy Lees, president, Windows Phone Division, Microsoft. "Microsoft believes in a model where all our partners can grow and profit based on our platform."

"Through the cross-licensing of our respective patent portfolios, Samsung and Microsoft can continue to bring the latest innovations to the mobile industry," said Dr. Won-Pyo Hong, executive vice president of global product strategy at Samsung's mobile communication division. "We are pleased to build upon our long history of working together to open a new chapter of collaboration beginning with our Windows Phone "Mango" launch this fall."

FOSS Patents notes that "This is the most important Android-related intellectual property deal in its own right, and even more significant against the background of Google's proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility. If Samsung truly believed that Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility was going to be helpful to the Android ecosystem at large, it would have waited until that deal is closed before concluding the license agreement with Microsoft. But Samsung probably knows it can't rely on Google. It decided to address Android's intellectual property issues on its own."

Interestingly, it appears that Samsung was able to negotiate a lower licensing fee by promising to work with Microsoft to promote Windows Phone 7. Microsoft's mobile operating system has received good reviews but has seen low adoption rates and the company working hard to negotiate deals with manufacturers to push the OS.



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Why are there Apple logos in the backdrop of a Samsung store? UPDATED: Replaced with “S” icons

UPDATE [Monday, September 26, 2011 at 11:30am ET]: The Sammy Hub blog pointed out that Samsung has replaced all the wrong icons by an “S,” as seen in another image after the break.

Spotted by the folks over at CNET, an Italian Samsung store actually has Apple logos in the backdrop. You’ll noticed circled that there are App Store and Safari logos. Alright we’re just going to put this out there, Samsung — what the hell happened here? With all of the legal proceedings going underway, we’d think Samsung would try to step away from this kind-of thing.


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Samsung Galaxy S II clocks the fastest GPU in any current smartphone, but it likely won’t be a match for iPhone 5

Image courtesy of Anandtech

Anandtech has published some interesting findings based on their extensive Samsung Galaxy S II review. It’s the first smartphone to use the graphics processing unit based on the Mali-400 core from ARM Holdings, a fables chip maker from the UK. In fact, Samsung has engineered and manufactured its own system-on-a-chip solution for the handset.

They call it the Exynos 4210 and it combines a dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU core and the aforementioned Mali-400 GPU sporting four cores. The resulting performance, says Anandtech, is comparable to Texas Instruments OMAP 4 chip that incorporates Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR SGX540 GPU core. However, the quad-core 1.2GHz Exynos 4210 probably won’t hold a candle to iPhone 5, which will likely carry the same dual-core processor-GPU combo as the iPad 2′s 1GHz A5 chip:

Samsung implemented a 4-core version of the Mali-400 in the 4210 and its resulting performance is staggering as you can see above. Although it’s still not as fast as the PowerVR SGX 543MP2 found in the iPad 2, it’s anywhere from 1.7 – 4x faster than anything that’s shipping in a smartphone today.
Interestingly, and per the GL Benchmark included below, the Exynos 4210 is more than twice as fast compared to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 that runs Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chip and nearly four times speedier than iPhone 4′s 800 MHz A4 chip that sports the PowerVT SGX535 GPU core. However, the 4210 falls short in the triangle throughput department, a big disadvantage over the iPad 2′s A5 processor that clocks nine times the graphics performance of the original iPad’s A4 chip.

Triangle throughput is important in graphics-intensive games and will become key in “future games that may scale along that vector rather than simply increasing pixel shader complexity”. The video of Anandtech’s Samsung Galaxy S II review below..





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Apple successfully blocks Samsung from showing off Galaxy Tab 7.7 at IFA in Germany

(We got a look at the Tab 7.7 before it was pulled)

Apple won a pretty significant victory today in its attempts to block Samsung from selling its iPad competitor products in Germany and in greater Europe. This week’s IFA show is a CES-like pan-European event which showcases new consumer products from just about everyone except Apple.

Most of the buzz this year however is around two of Samsung’s new products, the Galaxy Tab 7.7 and the Galaxy Note 5.3. Both have 1280×800 SuperAMOLED Displays and run Android 3.2 but the Tab falls under the line of products that Apple is trying to block and is currently under a set of injunctions in various parts of the world.

Interestingly, Samsung was originally showing the 7.7 devices to reporters with “not for sale in Germany” stickers attached. However last night, Samsung started removing the devices from the floor and covering up the advertisements like the product never existed (below).



It appears that Apple got Samsung to block the whole Tab line. The Tab 7.7 is much smaller than the iPad weighing only 334 grams, yet has a higher resolution screen – so it appears that Apple’s injunction is very broad.

Bloomberg reports:

Samsung, Apple’s closest rival in tablet computers, pulled the just-unveiled Galaxy Tab 7.7 out of the IFA consumer- electronics show in Berlin after a Dusseldorf court on Sept. 2 granted Apple’s request to ban sales and marketing of the product, James Chung, a Seoul-based spokesman for Samsung, said by telephone today. “Samsung respects the court’s decision,” Chung said, adding that the company believes it “severely limits consumer choice in Germany.” Samsung will pursue all available options, including legal action, to defend its intellectual property rights, he said.
It will be interesting to see what direction this goes. Will Apple be able to successfully block Samsung’s (and others’) tablets for sale across the world? There is some concern that if Apple doesn’t win in these cases, damages to Samsung could be significant.



Images via ThisismyNext

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NPD: Google, Apple gaining ground as RIM continues on a downward spiral

In the battle for mobile supremacy, Apple and Google are winning as competitors continue to lose ground, finding it increasingly difficult to compete with the strong iOS and Android ecosystems (can you say ‘duopoly’?), per latest survey from the NPD Group. The results came by tracking U.S. consumers aged 18+ who reported purchasing a mobile phone and exclude corporate purchases. In the June quarter, iOS grabbed 29 percent of the U.S. smartphone share versus Google’s 52 percent share. Both tech behemoths have grown their platform share at the expense of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.

RIM’s been on a serious decline amid poor sales and delays related to their QNX-based superphones. Their BlackBerry OS software share fell to just eleven percent in the U.S. Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard’s webOS is in a state of limbo as the world’s leading computer maker announced intentions to exit the hardware business. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 and Windows Mobile grabbed five percent of the market each.

The emerging prepaid market is the next battelground for iOS and Android. Google, however, has the first mover advantage here…

NPD’s Ross Rubin argues Google’s deal with Motorola could result in “closer ties to the heart of Android that can help inspire new paths to differentiation”. Think the booming prepaid smartphone market, where one in five new handsets acquired in the June quarter was on a prepaid plan. “In Q2 2010 just eight percent of prepaid phones were smartphones, but in Q2 2011 that number jumped to 22 percent”, NPD warns. Apple, of course, has been locked in the persistent rumors calling for an inexpensive iPhone. The device has been portrayed as anything from the so-called iPhone nano featuring a tiny form factor to the low-priced iPhone 4 to even a recycled iPod touch with 3G networking capabilities.

The market for prepaid handsets presents Apple and Google with a major growth opportunity. Whether or not Google uses its ownership of Motorola to enter the hardware game remains to be seen. What’s certain is Motorola’s steady decline as the company has seen its market share shrink due to competition from Samsung and LG. The company lost three percentage points of the handset market in the past twelve months and experienced the same drop in smartphones.

Their annual Android unit share halved from 44 percent in the second quarter of last year to just 22 percent in the June 2011 quarter. Quarterly sales for June topped 4.4 million Android handsets, in stark contrast to the 20.34 million iPhones. NPD previously reported that Verizon iPhone stopped Android’s market share march and was among the first to report that Android overtook the iPhone in sales back in May of 2010.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster theorized that Android’s market share could drop below iOS by 2013 should Google close Android and keep it proprietary to Motorola. The speculative scenario has Google sell one in five handsets in 2015, with Windows Phone devices accounting for half of the market and iOS ranking #2.

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Cross-posted on limerain_com

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Forbes: Apple is fifth most innovative company, Google is #7 Don’t even ask about Microsoft.

Forbes has put together (via setteB.IT) a list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies and Apple ranked fifth. Salesforce.com leads the pack, followed by Amazon (#2), Intuitive Surgical (#3) and Tencent Holdings (#4). Interestingly, Google is seventh most-innovative company in the world on the publication’s list. Other worthy mentions: Nintendo (#20), Activision Blizzard (#22), Starbucks (#19), PepsiCo (#50). The usual suspects don’t fare well, however. Adobe is ranked 54th (little wonder, with their confused CEO) and Apple’s court friend HTC is 56th. Steve Jobs best friend’s company Oracle is 77th and Microsoft is far down on the list, ranked 86th. The full list is available here. But wait, how do you measure innovation? Read on…




Forbes calls it the five skills of disruptive innovators and here they are:

Questioning allows innovators to challenge the status quo and consider new possibilities; Observing helps innovators detect small details—in the activities of customers, suppliers and other companies—that suggest new ways of doing things Networking permits innovators to gain radically different perspectives from individuals with diverse backgrounds; Experimenting prompts innovators to relentlessly try out new experiences, take things apart and test new ideas; Associational thinking—drawing connections among questions, problems or ideas from unrelated fields—is triggered by questioning, observing, networking and experimenting and is the catalyst for creative ideas.
That, and the usual stuff to consider such as sales, profitability, growth, market share, hype and other tangibles and intangibles.

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Cross-posted on limerain_com

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Apple, Google, Samsung & everyone else eyeing InterDigital patents

Over the past few weeks, the patent arms race has been accelerating and the latest comes in a Bloomberg story that has old frenemies – Apple, Google and Samsung – locked in a fight for InterDigital’s patent portfolio. Samsung is said to be interested the most in InterDigita’s intellectual property their CEO claims is “stronger” than the 6,000 Nortel patents the Apple-led consortium recently acquired for $4.5 billion. People familiar with the matter tell the publication Samsung has been “approached to make a bid”:

Samsung is looking at the patents along with Apple Inc. (AAPL), Google Inc. (GOOG) and other potential bidders, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. InterDigital, which holds patents related to mobile technologies used to transfer information, said last month that it hired bankers as it considers a sale.
InterDigital’s patent portfolio covers technology for high-speed cellphone networks “now used by the world’s biggest handset makers”, including Apple’s iPhone as well as BlackBerry and Android phones. The portfolio includes 8,000 patents in total and is estimated to be worth $5 billion or more. “To hedge the risk, Samsung could go ahead with bidding, although they may have to pay a big premium”, says Shinyoung Securities Co. analyst Lee Seung Woo.

Kodak on Monday put ten percent of its patent portfolio, or 1,100 patents, on sale, among them the image-previewing patent Apple and Research In Motion are being sued for. Google is fresh off acquiring 1,100 patents from IBM after they had lost the Nortel bid. HTC paid $300 million for S3 Graphics (really its patents) to gain some leverage in their pending lawsuit with Apple. Cynics might observe that patent holders around the world are looking to cash in on pending lawsuits as everyone is suing everyone in the mobile space.

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Cross-posted on limerain_com

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Kodak considering sale of patent involved in Apple lawsuit

In January of 2010, Kodak sued Apple and RIM for infringing on their patent to preview photographs. The lawsuit is still going on, but today Wall Street Journal is reporting that Kodak is currently looking to sell 10% of their patent portfolio, which includes the patent Apple and RIM are bring sued for.

The 1,100 patents include patents covering capturing, storing, organizing and sharing digital image. WSJ credits the sale to Kodak’s loss in profit over the last two quarters.

Chief Executive Antonio Perez has been using Kodak’s intellectual property as a means of funding the company’s long and expensive transformation. In 2008, Mr. Perez put forth a goal to generate between $250 million and $350 million a year from Kodak’s patent portfolio.
Google is fresh off acquiring 1,000 patents from IBM and is likely still in a buying mood as it battles everyone from Oracle to Microsoft to Apple-by-proxy in the courts. Apple, who outbid Google for the Nortel patent portfolio at $4.5B is obviously on the offensive.

Kodak’s decision to sell its patents follows a $4.5 billion patent sale by Nortel Networks Corp. Kodak has retained Lazard as an adviser for the sale. Lazard also advised Nortel on its sale.

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Cross-posted on limerain_com

We are about to see the biggest patent auction ever, rivaling nortel patent sale. With at least one of the patents holding Apple and RIMM at the edge the prospects are: Google to better station itself against more patent litigation, Apple to stop one lawsuit against itself and to give it more leverage over others, RIMM to stop a lawsuit against itself and maybe use it against Apple.

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Samsung gives in to Apple, temporarily halts tablet sales in Australia, is the USA next?

Image via PCWorld.com

In a surprising turn of events to anyone following the ongoing Apple vs. Samsung spat, Bloomberg reported this morning that Samsung has agreed to temporarily cease sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet until their legal dispute with Apple is settled or they win court approval:

Apple Inc. escalated a patent dispute against Samsung Electronics Co. and won an agreement that the South Korean company won’t sell the newest version of its tablet computer in Australia until a lawsuit is resolved. Samsung, based in Suwon, South Korea, agreed to stop advertising the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia and not to sell the device until it wins court approval or the lawsuit is resolved.
It’s interesting because Samsung was advertising the Galaxy Tab 10.1 launch in the country since July 20. Still, carriers Vodafone and Optus both hinted at plans to offer the device to their Australian customers “soon”. Samsung’s decision came as a lawyer for Apple sought an injunction before Federal Court Justice Annabelle Bennett in Sydney, claiming Samsung’s tablet infringes ten Apple patents. With that in mind, Samsung’s clearly on the defensive here. Apple also wants wants to “stop Samsung from selling the tablet in other countries” and Samsung’s conceding to Apple may have set an important precedence for other countries. Of course…




…other countries have entirely different laws so one particular country reaching a certain decision means little to another country as there are no precedents in international law. Perhaps Samsung’s willfully making a concession to Apple as a prelude to a settlement of sorts. It could be also that Australian law is just stronger in this regard or perhaps Apple’s legal team prepared better than Samsung’s in the country. A similar story is unfolding in the case of Apple vs. HTC, with HTC executives signaling it’s time to “sit down and figure it out” as the International Trade Commission has found HTC in violation of Apple’s patents related to iPhone technologies.

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