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Samsung’s New Chip Line To Boost Flash Memory
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Samsung Electronics, the world’s No.1 memory chip maker, said it began mass production at a new $10 billion chip line, as it seeks to raise its profile in the booming flash memory chip market fueled by robust demand growth in mobile products.
Samsung’s new production line, its first in about five years, will help the company sharply lower production costs of the chips and could exacerbate oversupply in the market, stifling smaller rivals.
Apple Inc, the maker of popular iPhones and iPads, and Sony, which joined the crowded tablet market last month with two new devices, buy flash memory chips from Samsung.
The cost-competitive facility will make it difficult for its major customers to shift away to other suppliers.
Apple, Samsung’s biggest customer locked in a series of patent legal battles with the South Korean firm, is trying to reduce sourcing from the emerging competitor.
“The new line won’t have any immediate impact on the supply side, as it will take some nine months to fully raise capacity run rates, but it shows Samsung’s attempt to take more share in the flash chip market,” said Song Myung-sup, an analyst at HI Investment & Securities.
Samsung Asks ITC To Ban Apple Products
July 6, 2011 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics
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Samsung requested that the U.S. International Trade Commission ban the importation of Apple’s iPhones, iPads and iPods, ratcheting up its fight with Apple.
The filing, dated Tuesday, states Apple’s iPhone, iPod digital music player and iPad tablet infringe on five of Samsung’s patents involving telecommunications standards and user interface inventions.
Samsung also filed a fresh patent lawsuit against Apple in a Delaware federal court on Wednesday.
The complaints are the latest salvo in a growing legal battle between the two electronics giants.
In April, Apple sued Samsung in a California federal court, claiming the South Korean firm’s Galaxy line of mobile phones and tablets “slavishly” copies the iPhone and iPad.
Samsung then countersued in California, and Apple last week filed another lawsuit in South Korea. An Apple spokesman could not be immediately reached on Wednesday.
As well as its own phones and tablets, Samsung manufactures microchips for Apple’s gadgets, a business that brought in about $5.7 billion in revenue for the South Korean company last year.
Before banning the importation of Apple’s popular devices, the ITC would first have to agree to look into Samsung’s allegations, a process that could be quite lengthy.
Jobs Returns To Announce Apple’s New Product
June 8, 2011 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics
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Apple Inc CEO Steve Jobs returns on Monday to the stage at San Francisco’s Moscone center to unveil what investors hope will be the next source of growth for the world’s most valuable technology company.
Jobs, who has been on medical leave for several months and last took the stage in March to present the iPad 2, will announce the iCloud, a Web-based service that lets consumers stream music they bought to any Apple device, pitting it against rivals Google Inc and Amazon.com Inc.
That expansion into cloud computing is seen as necessary if the company is to stay competitive with increasingly popular open-sourced software, such as Google’s Android operating system, according to analysts and investors.
The iCloud has the potential to make Apple’s iTunes even more powerful, making it tougher for rivals to keep up, Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu said.
“It looks like Apple will likely offer some base service for free,” Wu said. “Competitors, including RIM, Google, Amazon and Microsoft already have a hard time competing with iTunes as it is, but we believe will likely find it even tougher with iCloud enhancements.”
Apple Outs Patch For Tracking Issue
May 6, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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As Apple promised last week in several discussions regarding its location tracking issues, iOS 4.3.3 addresses three bugs related to the database of location information on iOS devices. Firstly, it reduces the amount of the cached location information to a week’s worth, rather than relying on a size limit, as it previously did.
Secondly, it no longer backs up the cache to your Mac or PC via iTunes upon syncing, so the information isn’t available to anyone with access to your computer. And finally, the cache is now deleted from the device when Location Services are disabled in iOS’s Settings app.
Apple has also announced plans to encrypt the location information on iOS devices itself in the next major update to the operating system, which presumably means it will be incoporated into iOS 5.
The iOS 4.3.3 update applies to the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad, iPad 2, third-generation iPod touch, and the fourth-generation iPod touch. Exceptions to this fix though, are the iPhone 3G and the second-generation iPod touch, both of which were supported by the original release of iOS 4 when the location database is believed to have been created but have since been dropped from compatibility. Also missing in action is the CDMA iPhone 4, although some reports have suggested that it didn’t log data in the same way as the GSM model.
Samsung Sues Apple
April 25, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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In the uber competitive world of mobile device development suing is fast becoming a sport engaged in by all of the titans of technology. Add another lawsuit to the pile as Samsung Electronics hits Apple with lawsuits in three countries alleging infringement of patents on smartphone technologies. Last week Apple sued Samsung for allegedly copying the designs of Apple’s iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone in its Galaxy smartphone and Galaxy Tab tablet PC.
On Thursday, the South Korean electronics maker sued Apple in Seoul alleging five patent infringements, in Tokyo over two alleged infringements and in Manheim, Germany, over three.
“Samsung is responding actively to the legal action taken against us in order to protect our intellectual property and to ensure our continued innovation and growth in the mobile communications business,” the company said in a statement.
According to Samsung, the lawsuits say Apple infringed on patents concerning reducing data transmission errors in WCDMA (Wideband CDMA) mobile networks, tethering mobile phones to PCs so the PC can use the phone’s wireless data connection, and reducing power consumption when transmitting data over HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) networks.
Apple’s lawsuit filed on April 15 in the U.S. says Samsung copied external design features on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. The lawsuit further alleges that Samsung designed application icons for that come close to icons on Apple’s devices.