Samsung Making Ultra MicroSD Card

Samsung Electronics has started mass producing a microSD card that uses an Ultra High Speed-1 (UHS-1) interface to greatly improve data transfer speeds, the company said in an announcement on Wednesday.

The microSD HC card stores up to 16GB and has a maximum sequential read speed of 80MBps (megabytes per second), according to internal tests conducted by Samsung. That is more than four times the read speed of today’s advanced microSD cards, which have speeds up to 21MBps, Samsung said.

What real-world speeds that will translate into remains to be seen. The card will be a good fit for LTE smartphones and tablets, according to Samsung.

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Apple Helps Samsung Sell Tablets

Samsung has thanked Apple for the free advertising for its Galaxy Tab created by the legal disputes between the companies.

Tyler McGee, VP of telecommunications at Samsung Australia, said that Apple had made Samsung’s tablet computer “a household name”, which the firm believes is more than it could have managed with its marketing alone, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

This ironic twist of fate means that instead of slowing Samsung down and keeping its products off the market, Apple has inadvertently created a lot of buzz for those devices, which is now paying off with high demand as the Galaxy Tab returns to shop shelves in Australia.

Samsung has shipped a significant volume of tablets to Australia in time for the 16 December launch, perfect timing for the busy Christmas shopping period. However, McGee warned that demand is higher than supply, suggesting that there will be shortages of the device.

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Apple Scores A Victory

A court imposed a temporary ban on the sale of Samsung Electronics’ latest computer tablet in Australia on Thursday, delivering rival Apple another legal victory in the two firms’ global patent war.

Resolution of the case could take months — unless Samsung takes the potentially risky option of an expedited hearing — which, in the fast-moving industry, could mean the new Galaxy tablet is never launched in Australia. The Galaxy is the hottest competitor to Apple’s iPad, which dominates global tablet sales.

“The ruling could further extend Apple’s dominance in the tablet market as it widens a sales ban of Samsung’s latest product,” said Lee Seung-woo, an analyst at Shinyoung Securities in Seoul.

Whilst the ruling is a blow for Samsung, the Australian market is not large. A more important legal battle starts later on Thursday, when a Californian court begins hearing Apple’s bid to ban sales of Galaxy products in the United States.

The two technology firms have been locked in an acrimonious battle in 10 countries involving smartphones and tablets since April, with the Australian dispute centering on touch-screen technology used in Samsung’s new tablet.

The Federal Court in Sydney, in granting the temporary ban, ruled Samsung had a case to answer on at least two of Apple’s patents. The ban applies on sales of Samsung’s Galaxy 10.1 tablet until the same court rules on the core patent issue.

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Intel, Samsung Behind New Phone OS

Two Linux software groups have decided to collaborate, they said on Wednesday, to develop a new operating system for cellphones and other devices in partnerships with Intel and Samsung Electronics.

However, analysts said the new Tizen platform is likely to struggle to attract wider developer and manufacturer support to compete with the dozen or so other mobile operating systems in a market dominated by Apple and Google’s Linux-based Android.

Even industry majors Nokia and Hewlett-Packard have canceled their mobile platforms this year.

“The best hope for them is that big operators get worried by Android’s increasing smartphone dominance and decide to consciously switch their allegiances to rival platforms to restrict Google’s huge influence over the mobile market,” said analyst Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics.

LiMo Foundation and the Linux Foundation said the new Tizen platform is an open-source, standards-based software platform that supports multiple devices including smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, netbooks and in-vehicle ‘infotainment’ systems.

The initial release is planned for the first quarter of 2012, enabling the first devices using Tizen to come to market in mid-2012, the two groups said.

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Verizon Sides With Samsung Not Apple

Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile operator, has taken a legal stand against Apple Inc’s request to prohibit the sale of some Samsung Electronics models in the United States.

“The requested injunction of certain Samsung products will harm Verizon Wireless and U.S. consumers,” Verizon said in a court filing dated September 23.

“It also has the possibility of slowing the deployment of next-generation networks — such as Verizon Wireless’s — contrary to the stated goals of the U.S. government,” it said.

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Plc.

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Samsung’s New Chip Line To Boost Flash Memory

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.

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Samsung Sues Apple

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.

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Seagate To Acquire Samsung’s HD Unit

Seagate Technology is to acquire Samsung Electronics  loss-plagued hard disk drive (HDD) business for $1.4 billion as it looks to battle rival Western Digital Corp and curb price wars that continue to damage the industry.

The deal comes a month after Western Digital sought to buy Hitachi Ltd’s hard disk drive division for $4.3 billion, to create a global leader with deep resources.

It is yet to be seen whether Western Digital trump Seagate as the world’s largest hard drive maker after the deals conclude. In 2010, Seagate’s sales was $11.4 billion while Western Digital posted revenue of $9.85 billion.

Toshiba Corp and Fujitsu are the other smaller players in the hard-drive space.

The sale of the HDD business will see Samsung leave the cut-rate industry and focus on its bread-and-butter memory-chip business.

The sector is already battling persistent sales-growth declines and now faces a longer-term threat from wireless tablet devices using more power-efficient flash drives, or solid-state drives (SSD).

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Google Dethrones Symbian From Smartphones Top Spot

Google’s Android dethroned Nokia’s Symbian as the global leader in smartphone operating systems in the last quarter of 2010, ending a reign that began with the birth of the industry approximately ten years ago.

The changing of the guard reflects just how quickly Google, which offers its software to phone makers for free, has risen to the top of the smartphone market ahead of Apple’s rapid ascension. Google and Apple have revolutionized the smartphone market in recent years, sending Nokia scrambling.

In the fourth quarter, phonemakers sold 32.9 million Android-equipped phones globally, roughly seven times more than the year-earlier quarter, compared with Symbian’s sales of 31 million, according to Research firm Canalys.

The numbers also highlight Google’s success in battling Apple, whose shipments of its popular iPhone increased to 16.2 million from 8.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Unlike Apple or Nokia, Google does not make its own phone hardware but instead offers its Android operating system free to other phone makers who can customize it to suit their devices.

As a result, Android has become the standard software for many phone makers. U.S. phone maker Motorola Inc has even managed to stage a comeback of sorts by focusing solely on Android after years of heavy market share losses….. Read More

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