Samsung

Samsung reports nine million Galaxy S III pre-orders worldwide

Christian Zibreg ∙ May 18, 2012

Confirming its recent status of both the world's #1 smartphone and cell phone vendor, Samsung reportedly racked up over nine million pre-orders for its Galaxy S III smartphone worldwide. The figure excludes the United States, where an LTE version of the phone is slated to arrive in June.

This compares to first-weekend sales of the iPhone 4S exceeding four million units, twice as many units as the iPhone 4 which sold 1.7 million units during launch weekend.

Samsung's flagship handset got introduced on May 3, accompanied by a strong marketing push. It will first go on sale on May 29 in Germany with the 32GB model as a Vodafone exclusive for the first month. The device is already available on Amazon contract-free for $799...

Samsung: Apple “definitely using” our chips, “no plans” to cut production

Christian Zibreg ∙ May 17, 2012

Samsung has allegedly launched its latest 20-nanometer mobile memory chips ahead of schedule, acting on market concerns that a rumored Apple-Elpida partnership could hurt their business. New 4Gb mobile DRAMs are currently shipping to customers, the global conglomerate said, confirming it's been supplying memory chips for Apple's iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

It's business as usual, execs for South Korea-based Samsung claim, adding the company is not losing its edge as Apple’s top-tier client. Still, Cupertino could soon buy fewer chips from Samsung as it's been moving aggressively to diversify its part-sourcing channels...

Samsung just lost $10B market value on Apple order stoppage rumor

Christian Zibreg ∙ May 16, 2012

Samsung has lost a whopping ten billion dollars of market value on rumors of order stoppage concerning DRAM chips. The iPhone maker has reportedly secured half the manufacturing output from Elpida, a struggling Japanese maker of dynamic random access memory chips.

Apple is Samsung's biggest client and Cupertino's business contributes substantially to their fortunes so no wonder Samsung’s shares fell yesterday more than six percent to a nine-week low, effectively wiping out a cool $10 billion of the company's market capitalization...

Samsung posts first Galaxy S III advert, 100 percent devoid of Apple bashing

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 25, 2016

South Korea-headquartered Samsung, now the top smartphone and cell phone vendor in the world, just posted on its YouTube channel the first official advertising for its latest would-be iPhone-killer, the flagship Galaxy S III handset unveiled less than two weeks ago.

Unlike last year's Samsunged campaign, this high-profile advert is free of any direct or implied Apple spoofing. Even though it does ignore some pretty important marketing basics, the commercial is kinda cool (if I wanted to be cynical about it, I'd call it a typical agency bulls**t).

If anything, one's gotta appreciate Samsung's focus on establishing an emotional connection with the viewer in a manner that resembles Apple's Siri advertising. Have a look and tell us whether this Galaxy commercial is a match for the world's greatest marketing machine...

How about an iPhone with a bendable display?

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated May 16, 2016

A report out this morning from Far East suggested Apple could be interested in adopting Samsung’s new flexible OLED screens, presumably for use in iPads, iPhones and iPods. The South Korean conglomerate last year supplied Apple with nearly $8 billion worth of processors, NAND flash chips and screens for iOS devices.

Now, Samsung has reportedly received a “huge” number of orders for flexible OLED displays and supposedly Apple is among the phone makers interested in this technology. An iPhone with a flexible display, anyone? Just a pipe dream, you say? Bear with me for a second, there's more to this than meets the eye...

Apple tells court Samsung ruined evidence

Christian Zibreg ∙ May 11, 2012

In an ongoing legal fray, Apple dealt another blow to Samsung, its key supplier of NAND flash chips, displays and processors for iPhones and iPads.

The iPhone maker has accused the international conglomerate of purposefully destroying documents that would have been advantageous to Apple's position.

Apple now wants the judge to instruct the jury as follows...

Apple to judge: Samsung became top smartphone maker thanks to infringement

Christian Zibreg ∙ May 8, 2012

Less than two weeks before Samsung and Apple chief executives will meet for court-moderated settlement talks in San Francisco, the two frenemies cut the number of claims roughly in half in an effort to expedite the process and ahead of a summer trial.

That didn’t stop the parties from the usual bickering, with Apple saying Samsung’s copyright infringement practice has allowed the South Korean conglomerate to claim the top spot in worldwide smartphone sales.

Returning favor, Samsung argued Apple is “unable to compete”...

Samsung’s hand shown, will Apple come through with the next iPhone?

Oliver Haslam ∙ May 8, 2012

We may still be a good five months away from Apple's expected iPhone 5/Next iPhone announcement, but Samsung has already shown its hand with the Galaxy S III.

Building on the already hugely popular Galaxy S II handset, the third generation of the Galaxy S line will feature some interesting software additions alongside a reasonable speed bump and rather large screen. All in, it's an impressive-looking update for a company that has already shown that it is more than capable of going toe-to-toe with Apple when it comes to kicking out huge sales numbers and satisfied customers.

But shy of taking the Roman numeral approach to naming conventions and calling the next iPhone the iPhone V, what will Apple do to take the fight to Samsung now that the Koreans have firmly placed their stake in the ground? What must Apple do in order to compete with a handset that has seen almost as much excitement and expectation as any Apple product? The truth is that it might not actually need to...

Galaxy S III is cool, but official advert ignores marketing basics

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 25, 2016

As you've no doubt heard by now, Samsung has challenged Apple's smartphone dominance with yesterday's introduction of the third-generation Galaxy S smartphone at the Unpacked event in London.

Featuring an incremental bump up in specs and a host of software enhancements, you'd assume Samsung's marketing folks would proudly show off the device in official advertising.

Not so fast. A side-by-side comparison of the iPhone 4S and Galaxy S III commercials indicates Sammy's got a whole lot of learning to do: their 60-second advert features the flagship handset three times less frequently than Apple's commercial...

Samsung unveils its new flagship handset: The Galaxy S III

Cody Lee ∙ May 3, 2012

Even though iDB is primarily an iPhone-focused blog, we like to keep tabs on what the competition is up to. Earlier this week we told you about RIM's all-new BlackBerry 10 platform, and today we've got some news regarding Samsung's latest handset.

The Korean manufacturer unveiled the Galaxy S III earlier today at a media event in London. Packed with a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED display and a host of other high-end components, the device certainly looks impressive on paper. But is it?

iPad gulps more than two-thirds of market as Amazon’s Fire falls from grace

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 27, 2017

A whopping 91 percent of tech moms want it for Mother’s Day instead of flowers, teachers deem it the future of education (though DoJ disagrees), it's used everywhere for work, has managed to break Amazon’s monopolistic grip on the publishing industry - and yet it shows no sign of slowing down.

And even as rivals face downturn, folks are picking their iPads like there’s no tomorrow. This is the crux of latest market tablet survey by research firm IDG which pegged Apple's worldwide tablet share in Q1 2012 at 68 percent, up from 54.7-percent in the year-ago quarter.

Apple's growth largely came at the expense of Amazon’s Kindle Fire which plummeted from 16.8 percent share in Q4 2011 to just four percent share in Q1 2012. That's a staggering 12.8-percentage points market share loss in just one quarter. Another way to look at it: Amazon shipped only 700,000 Kindle Fire units in Q1 2012...

Apple concedes top smartphone vendor title to Samsung

Cody Lee ∙ Updated February 27, 2017

Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones last quarter, nearly doubling the amount of handsets it sold in the same three month period a year ago. But despite its record-breaking performance, the company still conceded its top smartphone vendor title to Samsung.

During the holiday quarter, Apple shipped 37.1 million handsets — the most out of any of the other smartphone manufacturers in the world. And it looked like it was set to do it again this time around, but the Korean handset-maker edged it out...