Samsung

Apple ties Samsung for the world’s top smartphone maker crown

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated August 29, 2016

Driven by phenomenal iPhone sales during the holiday quarter, Apple has now tied Samsung for the title of the world's top smartphone maker. According to latest numbers from research firm Strategy Analytics relayed by Bloomberg, both companies sold about 74.5 million smartphones during the fourth quarter of last year.

Both companies took an equal 19.6 percent market share in the global market for smartphones. Motorola owner Lenovo was a distant third with a 6.5 percent share, followed by Chinese vendor Huawei, which took a 5.7 percent share. Lenovo and Huawei shipper about 24 million smartphones each.

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Samsung Galaxy S6 won’t be using Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chip due to overheating

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated December 4, 2016

News broke today that Samsung's upcoming flagship, the fabled Galaxy S6, won't be using Qualcomm's new mobile system-on-a-chip, the Snapdragon 810.

As Re/code noted, the revelation came indirectly, via Qualcomm's earnings call today, as the firm had to tell investors “a large customer's flagship device” won't be shipping with the Snapdragon 810 inside.

Lost business has forced Qualcomm to cut its outlook for the fiscal year slightly. The semiconductor maker did not say which client, and why, has dropped the Snapdragon 810.

However, a week ago Bloomberg learned that Samsung had opted to drop the 810 from its upcoming flagship due to overheating problems.

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Samsung’s Galaxy S6 rumored to adopt touch-based fingerprint sensor akin to Touch ID

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated August 4, 2016

Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S6 flagship smartphone will include a much-improved fingerprint sensor which takes cues from Apple's Touch ID in that it will recognize a fingerprint when a user places their fingertip on the Home button, according to an unverified report last week by SamMobile.

The Galaxy S5 made some noise by adding a fingerprint sensor that requires users to swipe their finger on the sensor. It didn't win praise for quality or innovation as reviewers were quick to pan it due to inaccurate and unreliable performance, which ultimately frustrated the users.

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Samsung’s SmartThings platform for the connected home will work with Apple’s HomeKit

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 12, 2015

Samsung's new solution for the connected home, based on a technology provided by SmartThings, a startup it announced acquiring in August of last year, will play nicely with Apple's own HomeKit platform, Cnet reported Monday.

Although SmartThings CEO Alex Hawkinson did not detail precisely how HomeKit fits into Samsung's strategy, he did confirm that his company's SmartHome platform will support HomeKit.

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Apple dominated Christmas, activating 2.9 devices per one Samsung

Jake Smith ∙ Updated April 17, 2018

Mobile analytics firm Flurry is out with its December Christmas week research, like it does every year, and one thing is extremely evident - Santa loves Apple. The iPhone accounted for 51 percent of new device activations from December 19th to December 25th, putting a pretty good beating on Samsung, who only accounted for 18 percent.

Flurry found that for every one Samsung device that was activated, Apple activated 2.9 devices. For every Microsoft Lumia device activated, Apple activated 8.8 devices. We'll have to wait until Apple's earnings call probably sometime in January for more of a per-device breakdown, but it looks like the iPhone 6 far outweighed any other version of the iPhone.

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Samsung allegedly taking on Apple Pay with ubiquitous solution powered by LoopPay

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 14, 2018

Re/code is reporting that Samsung is prepping a response to Apple Pay in the form of its own mobile payment solution that doesn't require NFC and should support virtually 100 percent of credit cards and payment terminals.

The service should be announced sometime in 2015 as the South Korean giant is reportedly in talks with the Burlington, Massachusetts based mobile payments startup LoopPay about possibly incorporating their technology into its wireless mobile payment system.

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Rumor: Apple switching to Samsung-made Apple Watch chips, iPhone 6 battery and flash storage

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated September 26, 2016

The latest scuttlebutt fresh out of Korea has it that Apple is considering switching to Samsung-made components for the new iPhones and Apple Watch, including iPhone 6 batteries manufactured by Samsung SDI and NAND flash manufactured by Samsung's component making arm.

The story matches up nicely with a BusinessKorea report earlier this month which claimed Apple was considering changing its flash storage provider due to alleged issues with some 128GB iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus units.

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