Samsung some 20 months after the European Commission launched an investigation into its patent licensing practices, says it will not seek an injunction against any company, including Apple, wishing to license its patents for a period of five years. The company says it will also agree to a negotiation period of up to 12 months, after which it will rely on a court or arbitrator to draw up an agreement.
So is Samsung feeling the heat or showing good practise ?
Samsung and PayPal have forged an alliance that will add the popular PayPal e-commerce service into its app and content ecosystem. This will provide consumers with an easier and safer method of purchasing goods and will also let app developers receive payments faster.
DoCoMo has decided to omit Samsung from its winter devices after the Samsung Galaxy S4 missed the summer sales target by 30%. DoCoMo has chosen models from Sony, Sharp and Fujitsu instead.
During the summer, Sony’s Experia A managed to sell 1.3 million units at DoCoMo, while the Galaxy S4 moved just 700,000 units.
Sony seems to be on a bit of a roll at the moment with its Xperia range.
Apple hits three-year low in smartphone marketshare, shipment figures reveal.
Fresh reports during Q2 2013 have shown smartphones have outsold their less-intelligent feature phones for the second quarter in a row. Strategy Analytics says shipments hit a record-breaking 237.9 million. According to IDC, Samsung managed to ship a total of 72.4 million smartphones during Q2 – a 43.9% boost year over year – with help of the Galaxy S 4 and price cuts to the GS3. To put that in perspective, that’s more than double the 31.2 million iPhones Apple managed to ship, and Strategy Analytics claims this marks a three-year low in Apple’s marketshare. While LG and ZTE each occupy third and fifth place, respectively, Lenovo pushed Huawei out of the number four slot by sending out 11.3 million handsets.
However, I do expect Apple to bounce back with it’s new products and iOS refresh.
Samsung has bought Boxee, for a cool $30 million dollars. This acquisition is designed to beef up their arsenal to take further aim at the Apple TV box.
I also worry that when an acquisition like this happens, the company bought effectively vanishes. Well, even quicker than jumping jack flash, Boxee will be closed on 10th July 2013. So all customers TV programmes will be unavailable too.
And we call this progress!
Samsung has announced the new Galaxy S4 that has an ultra-fast Snapdragon 800 processor and radios for LTE Advanced networks. Hang on, Samsung has only just released the S4 and offered it with two different processors, a quad core snapdragron 600 and it’s own 8 core chip, but that didn’t have support apparently for LTE frequencies. Actually, Samsung was having issues with its own processor, hence why it used the snapdragron which did support the LTE bands.
So now it releases the S4 with a new processor that can handle all the frequencies and is slightly faster than the snapdragron 600. And guess what the 800 chip should help alleviate the lag on the S4. Samsung response to angry Korean customers is “most people won’t notice the difference”. My take is Samsung is being totally ignorant to its customers and ripping them off.
Mind you this attitude is nothing new as when the S4 was released it only has 9gb free memory and only after a consumer backlash did it decide to provide a half solution allowing apps to be moved to the memory card. I say half solution as only the app could be moved and not the app data. Also, internal memory is faster and more reliable.
I wonder how much longer Samsung can continue this way before consumers get fed up and buy other brands.
Samsung and HTC used twitter to slag each other off a few days ago. The below screen shot says it all.
But then LG UK decides to get involved with this tweet –
And if you follow the web page you get to the Nexus and the awards it won!
Samsung has lost $12 billion in market value following concern from analysts over slowing sales of the Samsung S4 and Samsung releasing too many different phones that are also impacting sales.
In fact Samsung probably has a phone, Phablet and tablet at every screen size imaginable. It’s range is too vast in my opinion and is causing Samsung to release unfinished buggy top end smartphones.
The drop in Samsung’s market value is the largest drop in a single day by the company.
SamMobile has revealed that there are launch dates for various Samsung Galaxy devices, including the Rugged Galaxy S4 Active, Galaxy Mega, Galaxy S4 Zoom, and the Galaxy S4 Mini. That’s a total of five different devices. The S4 Active will supposedly be available in Metallic Orange according to the reports and will hit stores sometime in mid-July. Bizarre choice of colour.
Of the five devices on the list, only the Galaxy Mega 6.3 and Galaxy Mega 5.8 have been officially announced, and the Rugged Galaxy S4 has only been confirmed by a Samsung executive. As for the Galaxy S4 Mini and the Galaxy S4 Zoom, we also lack official details for them as well. Looking to the future, we believe Samsung will announce the 3 versions of the Galaxy S4 towards the end of this month.
Check out the date range list below, and make sure to let us know what you think about Samsung’s decision to go with the color ‘metallic orange’ for the S4 Active.
GT-I9152ZKA– Black – week 25 (June 17-23) – Galaxy Mega 5.8
GT-I9200ZKA– Black – week 19 (May 6-12) – Galaxy Mega 6.3
GT-I9200ZWA– White – week 21 (May 20-26) – Galaxy Mega 6.3
GT-I9192ZWA– White – week 29 (July 15-21) – Galaxy S4 mini
GT-I9192ZKA– Black – week 29 (July 15-21) – Galaxy S4 mini
GT-I9295MOA– Metallic Orange – week 29 (July 15-21) – Galaxy S4 Active
SM-C1010ZKA– Black – week 23 (June 3-9) – Galaxy S4 Zoom
SM-C1010ZWA– White – week 25 (June 3-9) – Galaxy S4 Zoom
Samsung has launched Smart Switch to enable those moving from iOS to the Samsung S4 to find the equivalent apps with ease, transfer iPhone personal data, media and other content with ease.
The Samsung Smart Switch Migration app gives you the freedom and ease to switch from other smartphone platforms to Samsung Android mobile devices without the fear of losing your apps and personal content. First you need to visit http://www.samsungsmartswitch.com to get from your home computer to load your application files first. Smart Switch matches your favourite apps from your previous phone and recommends the exact app or similar ones from Google Play. When used with the Smart Switch desktop client, you can transfer personal content such as contacts, photos, calendar items, DRM-free music and videos from your previous phone so you can resume your busy lifestyle without missing a beat. If you just want to use the S4 app on your device you ca get it here.
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