Samsung

Oh Samsung

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Strange default behavior on the part of the Samsung Galaxy S4. Just odd.

Oh Samsung

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Arthur Neslen, writing for The Guardian:

Independent lab tests have found that some Samsung TVs in Europe appear to use less energy during official testing conditions than they do during real-world use, raising questions about whether they are set up to game energy efficiency tests.

Harrumph.

Android hits the wall

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Android has really hit a sales wall. All the major OEMs are canvassed, and their results are horrid. While Apple flies.

Leo Laporte learns about Samsung’s elegant sense of design

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This is just so very delicious. News of the amazing Galaxy Note 5 stylus design fail has been making its way around the blogosphere over the last few days. If you haven’t heard, Samsung’s latest and greatest, designed to take on the iPhone 6 (more on that in the next post), was released in the US on August 21st.

One slight problem, though. As you’ll see in the video below, if you insert the stylus wrong way in (and that appears to be pretty easy to do, as Leo demonstrates), the stylus gets stuck, held in place by a mechanism inside the phone. If you remove the stylus by force, you’ll permanently damage the sensor.

Oh Trevor

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More original thinking, this time from a Samsung fan.

Samsung caught hiring fans to attend their S6 Edge press conference

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WantChinaTimes:

South Korean smartphone giant Samsung paid people to pretend to be its fans at a press conference for its products’ release on Friday, reports Shanghai-based news outlet the Paper.

How is it possible Samsung did this and did not know they’d get caught?

Samsung’s next chess move

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Samsung revealed their next counter to Apple’s iPhone 6, 6 Plus, and Apple Pay. Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge are being decried by most people as shameless copies of the phones that have brought Apple so much success. Here are some thoughts on Samsung’s rapid shift in strategy.

Samsung in talks to launch Apple Pay competitor

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Re/code:

Samsung has discussed a deal with a payments startup that would help the smartphone maker unveil a wireless mobile payments system in 2015 to rival Apple, according to multiple sources.

Samsung at it again.

Apple replaces Samsung as top mobile brand in China

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CNET:

Samsung was replaced by the iPhone maker as No. 1 in China’s mobile sector this year, according to the China Brand Research Center’s 2014 China Brand Power Index ranking report released Tuesday.

A tale of three companies

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The quarterly mobile sales numbers from IDC are out and here’s what they say about the top three mobile phone companies.

Why Samsung fell

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John Kirk for Tech.pinions:

Samsung has reported a 60% fall in quarterly profits. Just three years ago, Samsung rose from seemingly nowhere to dominate the global smartphone market. Today, Samsung is being pressured from above and below as Apple steals away its premium customers and Xiomi and others steal away customers from the low-end.

Why did Samsung fail? In a word, commoditization. Read the whole thing. Well worth it.

Samsung earnings expectations plummet

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AP Wire:

The steep decline in income, likely the widest fall in Samsung’s earnings history, shows how the company’s quick rise to the world’s top smartphone maker with the Galaxy phones faces what might be its biggest challenge. Its struggle is apparent in both the high-end phone segment where it competes with Apple Inc. and the low-end segment where it faces rising competition from the likes of China’s Xiaomi and Lenovo.

This has been coming for a while now, but there’s no proof like watching earnings projections fall by half in a very short time.

Samsung and the pitch to stay on Apple’s ARM

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ZDNet (via 9to5mac):

Kim Ki-nam, president of the Korean electronic giant’s semiconductor business and head of System LSI business, told reporters at Samsung’s headquarters in Seoul that once the company begins to supply Apple with chips using its latest technology, profits “will improve positively”.

Why Samsung and not TSMC? Because size matters.

On adopting the big screen of the iPhone 6 Plus

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Quartz:

Call it the Church of Apple. Steve Jobs once called big phones Hummers (like the cars) and said that no-one was going to buy them. (He was sitting next to the current CEO, Tim Cook, when he said that.) Only a year after the iPhone 4S, the iPhone 5 was released with a 4-inch display and it sold like hotcakes. The Apple fans bought it and loved it. And the same thing is happening again. So what gives?

To me, it’s about acclimation. The move from the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 5 form factor was an easy adjustment. The iPhone 5 was lighter and longer, but still easy to use with one hand. The move from the iPhone 5 to the iPhone 6 is a bit more of a leap, and the move to the iPhone 6 Plus form factor is truly dramatic, challenging our preconceived notions about the aesthetics of phone size.

China moves to end Apple, Samsung phone subsidies

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China Daily:

China should end smartphone subsidies to overseas vendors and give more support to local brands, industry insiders said on Tuesday, as telecom carriers pledged to cut operating expenses and Apple Inc gets ready to debut its next-generation iPhone.

Xiang Ligang, a telecom researcher in Beijing, said cutting carriers’ subsidies to foreign-made handsets will not only reduce carriers’ operating expense but also leave local players with more market demand.

The perception is that buyers of high end phones are price insensitive and will buy the phones even without the subsidies.