Samsung

Samsung talks life after Apple

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 12, 2013

Samsung Executive Vice President David Eun during a panel at the D: Dive Into Media conference on Monday said its ongoing legal fight with Apple is "a loss" for innovation. And taking another page from Apple's book, the South Korean giant is plunking money into researching new technologies and better integration of its devices.

In fact, the company is turning the home turf of Apple and Google into a center of its own innovation by announcing the new Samsung Open Innovation Center in Silicon Valley...

The iPhone 5 rates fifth in US user satisfaction

Ed Sutherland ∙ February 11, 2013

Results of a new smartphone user satisfaction survey have some observers scratching their heads. Apple's iPhone 5 ranked fifth in the U.S., behind a number of Android devices from Motorola, HTC and Samsung. Due to Apple's past high ratings in customer satisfaction, the survey's findings prompted questions so far left unanswered.

According to a poll by OnDevice Research, Motorola's Atrix HD took first place in the U.S. user satisfaction scores, with the Motorola Droid Razr M, HTC's Rezound 4G, Samsung's Galaxy Note 2 and the iPhone 5 filling out the top five devices.

While Apple was named the top brand in overall mobile device satisfaction by U.S. consumers, Google ranked number two - even though it does not directly produce mobile devices...

How Apple sales are hitting a language barrier

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated May 16, 2018

Do you need another metric to follow in the race between Apple and Android? How about language?

That's the focus of a new report suggesting Apple's iPhone is predominantly focused on English-speaking nations while Android-powered Samsung smartphones are popular in Asia, Africa and South America, where English-speaking consumers are a minority.

After sifting through the Twitter accounts of both Apple and Samsung, a Saudi Arabian researcher at King Saud University (KSU) found 75 percent of Apple's followers spoke English, while about 35 percent of Samsung's online fans were non-English speakers...

Tim Cook opposed suing Samsung in 2011, but was overruled by Steve Jobs

Cody Lee ∙ February 10, 2013

There's an interesting report out this morning that takes an in-depth look at the so-called "frenemy" relationship between Apple and Samsung. The connections between the two are certainly odd, as they are competitors, supply chain partners and suing each other around the world.

Their latter association is perhaps the most known in recent years. The two companies' high profile court battles over who copied who have been very public, especially the most recent one in northern California. And according to Reuters, the whole thing started over the Galaxy Tab...

iPhone sales quadruple in India, but gap remains

Ed Sutherland ∙ February 8, 2013

When it comes to Apple's push to enter emerging markets like China, India's huge pool of consumers has largely been overlooked. Indeed, one of that country's leading newspapers charged Apple has "ignored" India, until recently.

From adopting the Indian rupee in the App Store to including local musicians in iTunes, the company has increased sales by up to 400 percent in four months. However, Apple still faces a large gap: only ten percent of India's residents own a smartphone and rival Samsung is the clear leader, researchers say...

The Woz: Apple has fallen ‘somewhat behind with features in the smartphone business’

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 7, 2013

One needs not ask Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak twice to comment on Apple's moves. For better or worse, he always makes headlines, sometimes by dissing Siri or the iPhone 4S battery life and other times by firing pot shots at Apple for not building a phablet of its own. Speaking at the Business Week Best Brand Awards yesterday, the Apple employee #1 discussed the iPhone, Samsung and competition.

Though an Apple loyalists, Woz isn't gullible and certainly doesn't shy away from confessing that competition has caught up with Apple. Other vendors did pass the iPhone in certain features and Samsung, he says, is a big competitor now.

In fact, he openly says that the South Korean conglomerate currently makes "great products". But worry not: the top geek loves the company he co-founded and "if Apple made lousy products, I would not be in line". Jump past the fold for other noteworthy quotes and a nice video...

Canalys: iPad accounted for 1 in 6 PCs in Q4 2012

Ed Sutherland ∙ February 7, 2013

Apple's iPad mini is doing the job exactly as the company planned: slowing a slipping market share. The 7.9-inch device is working so well one analyst credited it for preventing Apple's fourth-quarter share of the tablet market falling below 49 percent.

Another, even more striking tidbit: the iPad accounted for one-in-six PCs shipped in the fourth quarter of 2012, per research firm Canalys. And if you counted tablets instead of PCs, demand during the fourth quarter would be up twelve percent to 134 million units. Instead, PC shipments fell by five percent in 2012, emphasizing how tablets such as the iPad could recharge a flagging industry...

Apple, Samsung took 103% of 2012 handset profits

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

We have often written how the handset market is essentially a duopoly of operating systems - iOS and Android - as well as brands: Apple and Samsung. Yesterday came even another way the two are dominating the mobile world - profits. Apple and Samsung accounted for 103 percent of handset profits in 2013, a figure made possible by the zero or negative growth by six of the eight leading handset makers. Apple held 69 percent of handset profits earned in all of 2012, more than double that of the South Korean Samsung, which hauled in 34 percent of phone profits last year, according to Canaccord Genuity...

Chitika: iPad recovers from post-Christmas dip, now back to 81% share

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated April 18, 2016

Apple's iPad appears to have recovered from its post-Christmas slump. The tablet now enjoys an 81 percent share after falling from a high of 89 percent to 79 percent between December 25-27, 2012. Online advertising network Chitika Tuesday released the chart for the U.S. and Canada which proves the iPad recovered some of the ground lost to cheaper tablets.

The latest data obtained from millions of devices participating in Chitika's ad network shows Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet having the second-highest January 2013 market share. Although a distant runner-up to the iPad, the Amazon tablet scored a 7.7 percent tablet share, while Samsung's family of Galaxy tablets reached 3.9 percent...

iPhone snares global web usage crown from Nokia

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated April 10, 2018

Apple yet again became the beneficiary of Nokia's seemingly never-ending swan song, becoming the most-used mobile brand on the Internet in January. This despite Apple actually losing nearly three percent of mobile online usage. That the Finnish-based Nokia collapsed by more than fifteen points, dropping it out of first place to the third spot, also helped.

According to the independent website analytics company StatCounter, Apple had a nice 25.86 percent of mobile Internet usage in January 2013. Although that was a decline of 2.81 percent compared to the same month in 2012, Nokia's share in the same period fell from 37.67 percent to 22.15 percent, a significant decline...

Apple specialist Sam Sung gets a mention in Samsung’s Super Bowl commercial

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ae7E8J7h7Y

If you live outside the United States, you could be wondering why all the fuss about Super Bowl. But to many of our U.S. readers, Super Bowl is America's favorite national pastime. Regardless of the camp you belong to, pretty much all of us love big-budget Super Bowl commercials, that much is a given. And speaking of advertising, Samsung ahead of Sunday's Big Game has "leaked" its anticipated commercial.

Conceptualized by the Los Angeles-based creative shop 72andSunny and directed by Jon Favreau, it features Knocked Up stars Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd who are called in to pitch their concepts for Samsung's Next Big Thing.

But despite their best effort to bat around crazy ideas with Bob Odenkirk (example: "crowdsourcing... we won’t have to think of ideas!”), Miami Heat star LeBron James makes a tablet cameo and lands the gig instead. Though it takes jabs at both the NFL and ad industry and mocks Psy and his Gangnam Style, interestingly enough the commercial isn't about Apple at all, sans a subtle reference that almost escaped my attention...

Kodak completes patent sale to Apple, Google consortium

Cody Lee ∙ February 2, 2013

By now, you've all likely heard about Kodak's patent sale. The one-time photography giant filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy last year, so it was forced to sell off a large chunk of its intellectual property to a consortium of companies to help pay off its debts.

The sale, which included over 1,100 digital imaging patents, was approved earlier this month by Judge Allan Gropper. And this week, Kodak announced that it had completed the deal, and it plans to exit bankruptcy within the next six months...