Samsung - page 33

Tesla Motors is the smartest company in the world, according to MIT Tech Review’s latest survey of the brainiest corporations. Apple, which was not on last year’s list returns at number 16, beating out other firms like ride-sharing company Uber and smartbulb-maker Philips. MIT cites the newly released Apple Watch and touchless payment method Apple Pay as its reasons for inclusion, saying that these two products “set the pace for competitors.”

You can see the full list of smartiespants in the table below.

Samsung is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to cut more money off the $930 million Apple won in a patent lawsuit. The company is arguing that the appeals court’s earlier ruling is still unfair, even after successfully convincing the panel to chop off $382 million already.

Sales of the Galaxy S 6 haven’t been as great as Samsung would have hoped, so the company is going back to what it does best: desperately make fun of the iPhone.

The company released two new ads for the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge touting the phones’ wireless charging, wide angle selfies, and curved display that shows texts and emails and other info, while the iPhone 6 just has a boring metal edge with buttons.

You can watch both ads below:

Although it’s poised to win the smart home war eventually, Apple’s HomeKit is still half-baked. Case in point: hardly any smart home accessories officially integrate with it yet, let alone Apple’s own products.

Despite its parent company’s rivalry with Apple in the smartphone race, the SmartThings platform has beat HomeKit to the Apple Watch, and it makes the idea of controlling your home from your wrist look pretty useful.

Manny Pacquiao is expected to have made $80 million off the very boring ‘fight of the Century’ this past weekend just off the ticket sales. Pac-Man made a few extra million on the side too by becoming the latest iPhone-loving celebrity to convert to a Samsung salesman.

As part of the sponsorship, Pacquiao – who’s tweeted from an iPhone from years – crafted his tweets on a Samsung Galaxy S6, including two selfies he posted at weigh-in and on his way to the ring with Jimmy Kimmel. Samsung also filmed an entire behind-the-scenes video of Pacquiao on a Galaxy S6 Edge. But now that the fight’s over and Pac-Man’s cashed in, he’s back to using Apple devices.

Here’s the Samsung spokesman’s latest tweet, sent from an iPhone.

Want to sum up the difference between Apple and Samsung in a single image?

Don’t look at the logos. Don’t look at the operating systems. Don’t even look at what their respective gadgets look like.

Look at the lines. Look at the symmetry. Because Samsung can’t even get these basic things right.

Once you start looking closely, even Samsung’s best phones look like they were designed by a kindergartner.

Foxconn’s CEO Terry Gou is no fan of Samsung. In fact, according to a new report, he’s been trying to use his influence as Apple’s biggest manufacturing partner to get Apple to lessen its dependency on Samsung — while a giving a shot to other companies.

The reason? He thinks Taiwanese manufacturers need to work together to overcome the growing threat of the South Korean tech giant, which could potentially swallow all of their jobs.

Want to sum up the difference between Apple and Samsung in a single image?

Don’t look at the logos. Don’t look at the operating systems. Don’t even look at what their respective gadgets look like.

Look at the lines. Look at the symmetry. Because Samsung can’t even get these basic things right.

Once you start looking closely, even Samsung’s best phones look like they were designed by a kindergartner.

Anyone who dreams of Apple giving a “This is Sparta!”-style thrust-kick to rival Samsung, forever booting it out of Cupertino’s production process, is going to be sorely disappointed.

If anything, Apple’s leaning more heavily than ever on its longtime frenemy, with new reports claiming Samsung created a standalone team of around 200 employees dedicated exclusively to building new screens for iPads, MacBooks and possibly future Apple Watches.

Samsung’s not had too much luck with smartwatches, but a newly-published patent application shows that it’s not ready to throw in the towel just yet.

The patent describes what is less a traditional watch than a wristband or He-Man-style manacle. It features a wraparound widescreen display, able to function in both bent and flat states, and describes its possible applications as multimedia viewing and communication.

After all, you never know when you’ll need to summon Battle Cat to help in your ongoing war with Skeletor and his cronies!

Update: Samsung has denied the report, claiming that all invitees were “formally invited to the Shanghai Culture Square where the event took place.”

Samsung is trying to match the iPhone 6 in every way with the launch on the Galaxy S6. That includes pre-launch hype with over 1,000 people at events clamoring for a look at the new flagship phone, but in Samsung’s case, it has to pay for fans to show up.

Over 500 fake fans were paid to attend Samsung’s launch event for the Galaxy S6 in China on Friday. The total attendance reached around 1,000, but with the meager $4.80 Samsung shelled out to anyone under who looked like a student under 30, and could sit through one hour of the keynote.

The battle over who will manufacture the A9 chip for Apple’s next-gen iPhone has reportedly come to a close, with Apple giving the nod to long-time frenemy Samsung instead of current A8 chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).

15 percent of Samsung’s management left the company late last year following its dismal smartphone sales, according to a new report from Korea-based news outlet Yonhap News.

The tech giant had 1,219 management staff on its books as of 2014’s Q3 — only for this number to fall by 177 people by the end of the year. 44 of the 177 people who resigned or were fired were from Samsung’s IT & Mobile Communications department.

Ouch!

Having spent more than a year throwing smartwatch concepts a wall, only to discover that very few of them stick, Samsung’s taking a bit of a break from the wearables game.

But a newly-unearthed patent suggests that the South Korean tech giant could come back with a vengeance, thanks to a ripoff Apple concept bold new interface design based around an iPod-style rotating bezel. The idea would be that this rotating bezel could allow users to scroll through different apps, lists and menus without having to obscure the miniature display with their finger.

So, yeah, it’s basically the Apple Watch’s digital crown idea — only “different” enough to not be a direct analog.

Samsung might finally be kicked the curb when it comes to who gets the lion’s share of Apple’s chipmaking business. According to analysts Olivia and Rick Hsu from Daiwa Securities, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is likely to snap up 70 percent of all Apple’s A9 and A9X orders, leaving rival chipmaker Samsung out in the (relative) cold.

The reason for this is reportedly the “superior yield” and “manufacturing excellence in mass-production” exhibited by TSMC, which will get it a large percentage of the A9 orders, and all of the A9x orders for the next generation iPad.

Now that we know more about the long-awaited Apple Watch, it’s time to find out how it stacks up against Google’s Android Wear platform and the growing number of wearables that support it.

There are lots of similarities between the two, but there also some big differences in software, hardware, and price that will likely help you decide which one is right for you.

Of the smartphone stories which played out in 2014, two of the biggest were the triumph of Apple’s iPhone 6, which sold a massive 10 million+ units in its opening weekend alone, and the faltering of Samsung, which fell from the dominant position it had enjoyed since 2011.

Today, a new report from Gartner (paywall) breaks down both the 1.2 billion smartphone sales that took place worldwide last year, and also the sales from Q4 2014 — revealing how Apple leaped ahead in the smartphone category, while the South Korean tech giant Samsung started to lose its footing.

Make no mistake about it: this was the year everything changed.

We get slammed 24/7 with new Apple rumors. Some are accurate, most are not. To give you a clue about what’s really coming out of Cupertino in the future, we’re busting out our rumor debunker each week to blow up the nonsense.

This week the Apple Watch rumors have reached a crescendo as invites to a not-so-mysterious event in March were released. Will the Apple Watch really launch with 100,000 apps? Will demand for the gold Apple Watch wreak havoc on the world’s gold supply? And don’t forget about the Apple car either. New rumors are claiming Samsung could be the biggest boost or roadblock for project Titan.

Find out the truth behind the week’s wildest Apple rumors below:

The iPad might be the king of tablets when it comes to quality, but it is no longer the king when it comes to sales.

A new report from research firm Strategy Analytics says that the iPad is now being outsold by so-called Brand X tablets: generic tablets sold under any brand name that isn’t Apple or Samsung.

People hoping that Apple will drop the Samsung albatross from around its neck for the forthcoming iPhone 6s may be disappointed.

According to a new report coming from the Asian supply chain, Samsung has come to an agreement with Apple to supply new 20nm LPDDR4 DRAM memory chips for the next generation iPhone, expected this September. Samsung will reportedly provide half of the chips Apple needs for its next iPhone, and has no problems upping the order if more are required.

It was only a matter of time before Samsung did something to try and thwart Apple’s unconfirmed automotive aspirations.

The Korean iPhone competitor has bought the battery pack division of a leading automative supplier only a couple of weeks after it was reported that Apple had met with the company.

Apple is continuing to provide credible reasons that it may be working on an electric vehicle, as a new report suggests that Cupertino is in the midst of hiring away battery experts from major companies involved with the car industry.

The latest company to be allegedly targeted? None other than longtime Apple rival, Samsung.

Samsung has bought its own Apple Pay competitor with LoopPay, a U.S. startup that makes cases and accessories for wirelessly transmitting card data with a magnetic signal.

First rumored back in December, Samsung will allegedly integrate LoopPay’s technology into its upcoming phones in an effort to ride the growing mobile payments trend created by Apple Pay.

Unlike Apple, which is more comfortable (and lucrative) than ever with its business strategy, here in 2015 Samsung is having a bit of an identity crisis. Is it a freedom-fighting Internet of Things company making smart refrigerators and connected TVs? Is it a Xiaomi competitor, turning out cheaper smartphones than ever for the developing Indian market?

Like a deer in headlights, the company seems to be skittishly veering from one idea to the next, without any real understanding of what it needs to do to once again be competitive.

Of course, there is one idea that has worked for Samsung in the past, and with its mobile division falling on hard times, that strategy seems to be one the South Korean tech giant is more than happy to return to: copying Apple.

Things aren’t looking too rosy for Samsung at the moment. Having seen profits slip due to its falling mobile sales, the flailing South Korean tech giant is reportedly considering throwing in the towel altogether in Japan, where it’s struggling more than elsewhere.

Samsung currently represents a miniscule 4 percent of the Japanese smartphone market, which puts it in sixth place. According to sources with Samsung, staying in Japan is actually losing rather than gaining the company money.

While Samsung hasn’t traditionally been a top-seller in Japan, here in 2015 it’s doing worse than ever: with the company’s favorite metric, marketshare, shrinking from 17 percent two years ago to low single digits today.