If you thought that round two of Apple vs. Samsung was the end, you are sadly mistaken.
Although Apple recently won $119 million in a second victory against Samsung in patent court, that modest figure is nowhere near enough to make Apple back down. Not only is Apple seeking a retrial, but it wants to ban past and potentially future Samsung phones from being sold.
Apple’s sapphire glass could be the biggest thing to hit the iPhone since Touch ID, and even though it hasn’t announced an iPhone 6 or iWatch with a Sapphire glass display yet, its chummy parasitic buddy Samsung is already looking for a way to copy.
Conventional wisdom is that while Beats has a lot of fashion credibility, the actual audio quality blows. So why does Apple want to buy them?
Rumors have swirled that it’s an acqui-hire, and that Apple wants Beats so that it can also own Beats executive Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, whose contacts in the music industry are unparalleled.
But there could be another reason, too. Apple might want to prevent Samsung from purchasing Beats.
Apple and Google may have declared a truce but the patent war with Samsung still rages across the Atlantic as an ongoing patent battle in the Dutch appeals court has upheld Apple’s plea for an injunction against sales of older Samsung Galaxy phones.
George Orwell once wrote that, “The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.”
Yesterday we reported on the fact that Samsung and Apple were sitting down to negotiate an end to the ongoing litigation between the two companies — and unlike all the previous occasions, this time the plan was to make it stick.
Well, one day later, and talks between the two warring factions are reportedly breaking down — as lawyers from both sides express difficulty working with each other. What is seemingly particularly grinding gears in the Apple camp are statements made by Samsung’s top lawyer, referring to the protracted lawsuit as “Apple’s Vietnam” and Apple as “jihadist.”
The iPhone has hit a new all-time high when it comes to market share in Japan: representing a massive 36.6% of all Japanese smartphones in the first quarter of 2014.
This increase, which is up from last year’s 25.5%, was driven by Apple’s deal with NTT DoCoMo, a.k.a. Japan’s largest carrier. Apple launched the iPhone 5s and 5c with NTT DoCoMo back in September, and sales have been rocketing upwards ever since. Sales have proven so good, in fact, that Apple recently moved Doug Beck, chief of sales for Japan and Korea, over to handle the North American beat — where it is hoped he can apply some of the same sales mojo to increasing U.S. market share.
Critics slammed Steve Jobs when he opened the first Apple Store nearly 13 years ago, but now that Apple’s retail space makes more money per square foot than Tiffany’s, everyone from Samsung to Microsoft has been trying to duplicate Apple’s success.
To see just how quickly Apple Stores have invaded the U.S., Retale created an interactive map that plots each new store opening since 2001. Each blue dot in the GIF above represents a new store opening, starting with the original Apple Store in Tysons Corner, Virginia.
254 Apple Stores now dot the country with an additional 170 outlets open internationally, but six sad states in U.S. are still waiting for their first Apple shrines to open. Check out Retale’s site for a full breakdown on when each store opened and the flagship products that brought customers into Steve’s aluminum and glass utopias.
Think Apple is free from Samsung after defeating it yet again in court for flat out copying the iPhone infringing on several Apple patents? Think again!
In fact, when it comes to the iPad Apple is more reliant on Samsung than ever, according to a new report which suggests that the South Korean tech giant became the largest supplier of iPad displays in the first quarter of 2014.
With yet another week in the past your host Joshua Smith is here to give you a wrap-up on some of the latest and biggest news features. Touch iD coming to the iPad, Apple to buy Beats by Dre and more iPhone 6 rumors are among just some of the featured stories in today’s rundown. Take a look at the video and be sure to return next week for another.
Subscribe to CultOfMacTV on youtube.com to catch new episodes of the roundup and other great video reviews, how-to’s and more.
This time on The CultCast: No, those rumored new EarPods won’t measure your pulse. Last week’s biggest Apple rumor was a fake made up by a guy on a toilet! Plus, why you shouldn’t expect new hardware at June’s WWDC; iPhone warns you when the NSA wants you for drug trafficking; Apple’s newest executive gets a HUGE payday; Katie Cotton, Apple’s long time PR lead and Steve Jobs confidant, calls it quits; Cupertino will take on Samsung with more Guerrilla-style marketing; and since you asked, we reveal the jobs we’ve always wanted on an all-new Get To Know Your Cultist.
Have a few LOLs while we catch you up on each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin!
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The smartphone wars are two company race and it’s not even close.
Apple and Samsung are dominating the competition so badly that a new report from Canaccord Genuity claims the two tech giants account for 106% of global smartphone profits.
Take a look at this chart:
Oh, you wacky Samsung-ites — will you never learn?
Samsung was somehow recently granted a design trademark for a “display screen with icon” and, wouldn’t you know it, it looks almost exactly like the icon Apple currently uses for Siri.
Apple has regained its crown as J.D. Power’s top tablet maker in the world, according to the company’s latest U.S. Tablet Satisfaction survey.
Samsung knocked the iPad off the top post last year, but after surveying 2,513 tablet owners Apple came out on top in 2014 with a score of 830, dominating in every category except cheapness.
The passionate affair burned for decades before Samsung came snapping celebrity selfies with Ellen at the Oscars and dishing out enough paid endorsements to finance the next Star Wars trilogy.
Apple plans to fight back with its own buzz marketer in New York to keep its products in the hands of the elite and glamorous. But Cupertino has never had a problem getting its products on the big screen and into the coolest TV shows — even though Apple swears it doesn’t pay a dime for product placements. Here are 18 of the most iconic Apple cameos to hit the screen.
For the second time in a row Samsung has been found guilty by a U.S. court of ripping off Apple’s patents, but according to the jury foreman in the latest Apple vs Samsung case, there wasn’t a single piece of evidence or testimony that sealed Samsung’s fate.
Jury members met with the media after being dismissed Monday morning, including ex-IBM executive and jury foreman Thomas Dunham, who said the revelation that Google agreed to protect Samsung from damages on a couple of patents in the trial was the biggest shocker of all.
Apple came out on top of its legal battle against Samsung in U.S. federal court last week, and even though the iPhone-maker was ordered to pay a small fee to Samsung, the jury came back to the courthouse in San Jose CA this morning to award more damages to Apple.
The federal jury awarded Apple $4 million in additional damages this morning, after it was discovered last week that one Samsung product violated one patent, but the jury failed to award damages.
The jury is done deliberating. The results are in. And Samsung is guilty. Again.
Weeks of legal sparring between Apple and Samsung has finally culminated this week in San Jose, as a federal jury just ruled that Samsung did indeed infringe on at least one of Apple’s patents while it only partially infringed on others.
Celebrities like Samsung phones, but they love marketing paychecks even more.
The wave of Samsung-sponsored selfies that started with massive retweets at the Oscars, has become one of the most popular viral campaigns in the history of the Internet as everyone from Ellen to Big Papi have been spotted snapping Samsung-selfies in exchange for a fat paycheck.
And Apple is totally jealous.
In a blatant attempt to steal Apple’s thunder, Samsung has announced a conference to take place on May 28 — promising to kick start “a new conversation around health.”
Why is this stepping on Apple’s toes?
Because the very next week is Apple’s eagerly-anticipated Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) — where Apple is expected to introduce the first stages of its new health-tracking family of innovations, beginning with the Healthbook feature for iOS 8, and likely to later expand to include the iWatch.
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Back in the early 80s Apple greeted the arrival of IBM PCs with a snarky full page newspaper ad reading, “Welcome, IBM. Seriously.”
In the past few years, however, Apple’s claws haven’t come out all that often when it comes to taking rivals down a peg or two.
In fact, most of the recent sideways swipes involving Apple tend to be other companies (normally Samsung) taking shots at Apple, rather than the other way around.
Well, the tables have turned in a new print ad which appeared in the UK’s Guardian and free commuter paper Metro today.
The Apple vs Samsung legal battle has been full of low points for both companies as they spare for global domination, but an email from Samsung’s VP of Sales fired off just two days after Steve Jobs’ death shows how heartless the war has gotten.
Shortly after Jobs’ passing in 2011, Michael Pennington, head of national sales for Samsung Telecommunications America, told company leadership in an email acquired by CNET that Steve’s death was the best opportunity Samsung was going to get to attack the iPhone.
Here’s the full email:
Apple is one of several tech giants to enter a voluntary agreement to add a global anti-theft “kill-switch” to their handsets from July 2015.
Other companies on board include Google, HTC, Huawei, Motorola, Microsoft, Nokia, and Samsung — while carriers have reportedly agreed to help “facilitate these measures.”
Apple’s support of the need for a kill-switch doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. The company added an Activation Lock with iOS 7, designed to make it tougher for thieves to use stolen iOS devices. The feature allows users to remotely locate, lock and wipe their iPhones if they are stolen.
Samsung has redesigned its SD and microSD cards with color coding that makes it easier to spot the difference between product lines – regular, Pro and Evo. Unfortunately, this is the wrong way to color-code cards.
Queue the spy music, cause on this week’s CultCast, our very own Buster Heine sneaks into Apple’s under-construction Arizona Sapphire Crystal factory and reports back what he’s found. Plus, WWDC dishes out golden tickets like they’re Willy Wonka; what you can do about HeartBleed; all that’s been revealed in the ongoing Apple V. Samsung trial; and you asked, so we answer: why we love Apple but would never want to work there.
Hem and haw your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin!
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