samsung

Samsung ditches phones, pitches 4K televisions at CES

7 January 2014 by Steve Blum
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Samsung positions itself with curves.

Samsung is the dominant smart phone maker, accounting for around a third of annual unit sales world wide. But mobile isn’t at the top of its agenda at CES this year. It’s not introducing any new smart phones, preferring to save the buzz for the mobile industry’s powerhouse show next month in
Barcelona. “CES is traditionally a slower show for phones and such”, a company spokesman said.

Instead, Samsung is highlighting the increasingly also-ran television category, showing huge new ultra high definition screens – 4K capable it says – including prototypes that can curve and bend at a consumer’s whim.… More

Firefox OS performing as well as it can on ZTE Open SDK

29 November 2013 by Steve Blum
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Twitter top pick on Firefox app store.

The Firefox mobile operating system is clearly a work in progress, but that said, it works well enough already. I’ve been using a ZTE Open Firefox phone for three months, and can do most of the things I need to do and, as time goes on and software is released, more of the things I’d like to do.

The OS performs better than Bada, which I used for about a year on a Samsung handset.… More

It's enough for now that Tizen is smart enough for dishwashers

16 November 2013 by Steve Blum
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Just load it in when you’re ready.

Smart phones might not be the primary intended target for Tizen, the alternative mobile operating system that’s under development and backed primarily by Samsung and Intel. The expectation – based on Samsung’s words and actions – was that we’d see Tizen smart phones entering the market right about now. But operators, in particular the European carrier Orange, are saying they don’t expect to be offering Tizen handsets until some time later next year.… More

Sony sees but doesn't raise the mobile game

15 October 2013 by Steve Blum
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Coincidentally, it costs $200.

As the last MobileCon opens in San Jose, Sony announced today that it’s launching three mobile products in the US: the Xperia Z1 and Z Ultra smartphones and its new Smartwatch 2.

I don’t see any Wow! factor. The smart phones are standard, high-end Android devices and the smart watch seems more or less in line with Samsung’s Gear, although the fact that it can be used with any late model Android device (or so they say) and is a hundred bucks cheaper is a competitive advantage.… More

Fitness for Christmas is a mobile game

12 October 2013 by Steve Blum
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Old school only gets you so far.

About half of the annual sales of consumer electronics products will come between now and the end of the year, so manufacturers are feverishly trying to get their new products in front of consumers. Fitness applications, particularly ones built around smart phones, are getting an increasing amount of attention as the holiday selling season builds.

There’s no question that mobile phones are part of the standard kit for athletes (although hopefully not during races).… More

LG and Samsung give Apple a case of the bends

8 October 2013 by Steve Blum
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LG and Samsung muscle their flex.

LG and Samsung are firing press releases at each other, each claiming to have the first flexible OLED smartphone screen. Samsung teased their new technology at CES earlier this year, while LG unveiled its flex screen yesterday. Regardless of who is first, it’ll create marketing buzz for both companies as they build speed through the fall selling season.

A flexible screen means you can do cool things with design, like offering more useable screen real estate in more interesting ways.… More

Samsung 2, Apple 1

10 September 2013 by Steve Blum
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Sell me another one, not like the other one.

Apple’s reality distortion field did not die with Steve Jobs. Much of the press coverage of today’s announcement of two new iPhone models concluded that the iPhone 5c is aimed at defending global Apple’s market share by moving away from the saturated high end of the smart phone market.

The problem with that idea is that the cheapest unsubsidised 5c costs $549, well north of the low end smart phone offerings of Samsung, ZTE, Huawei, LG and others, which come comfortably under $200.… More

ZTE might get some developer love with cheap Firefox phone

17 August 2013 by Steve Blum
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Or it might be chasing its tail.

ZTE isn’t big in the U.S. Only the least of the four major mobile carriers – Sprint – offers a branded ZTE smart phone on its website and then just a single model. Its only distinguishing feature is the number of flaming negative reviews written by unhappy buyers.

With little to lose, ZTE is bypassing mobile carriers and going direct-to-geek by selling an unlocked $80 phone – the Open – running the new Firefox mobile operating system on eBay.… More

Diversify and conquer


Amazonian elephant coming up from behind.

There were three global technology elephants left standing at the close of the Consumer Electronics Show in January – Samsung, Google and Apple. Microsoft was last seen rumbling toward the elephant’s graveyard and the two likeliest candidates to replace it, Amazon and Facebook, were still shy of the necessary bulk.

Recent days have shown why Samsung and Google will rule the herd for a long time to come.

Google has so many market-default services that it’s accounting for 25% of daily Internet traffic, with 60% of the world’s devices touching it every day.… More

Tizen Foundation throws candy at mobile app devs


Game on.

A $4 million lolly scramble is underway to jump start the Tizen mobile operating system’s app store. The Tizen Foundation announced a developers’ competition with individual prizes that could go as high as $250,000, and released a new version of the software developer kit for the Linux-based and HTML5-centric OS.

Among other things, Tizen is Samsung’s coming replacement for bada, its in-house smart (or at least modestly bright) phone OS. While bada is a very functional, if lower end, platform, it’s suffered from a lack of developer love.… More