Although reports have surfaced that Apple may be building a top secret $10 billion chip fab, right now, the vast majority of Apple’s A-series chips are made by Samsung. This is obviously not an ideal situation, as it gives Apple’s arch smartphone rival the advantage of knowing what the iPhone-maker is planning on doing next, at least from a silicon perspective.
It looks like Apple may soon be able to rely less on its nemesis when it comes to building chips, though. A new report says that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) will largely take over for Samsung in making iPhone and iPad chips in the future. And they’ll be pretty crazy advanced chips, too, at least if the rumors can be believed.
Is nothing sacred in the Samsung vs. Apple clash, we ask you?
It might have recently been ordered to pay Apple $930 million in damages (with a possible side order of Apple legal fees), but Samsung still scored a personal victory this month by hiring away Apple’s senior store designer, Tim Grudgel.
As part of the ongoing legal saga with Apple, Samsung’s lawyers have filed a request with Judge Lucy Koh requesting a retrial of November’s case, which Samsung says Apple only won because it totally race baited the jury to get sympathy.
Two juries have already slammed Samsung with astronomical fines during its patent trials with Apple in the U.S., but the South Korean handset maker says it’s not ready to stop the fight yet and is asking for Judge Koh to award them with a judgment as matter of law in its favor, or a massive adjustment of the damages Apple was rewarded.
Here’s Samsungs’ explanation why the court should let them off the hook for the $379 million in feesApple was just awarded :
Samsung has merged its digital imaging and mobile communications businesses in a bid to create better smartphones. The South Korean company hopes that the reshuffle will lead to better collaboration between the two teams as consumers become increasingly concerned about camera performance when buying a new handset.
Right now, Apple has over $156 billion in its war chest, prompting investors like Carl Icahn to pretty much riot to try to get at some or all of it.
Compared to $156 billion, $16 million is a drop in the ocean of Apple’s money, an amount so small that Tim Cook wouldn’t think twice to even sign the check. But when it comes to Samsung, Apple’s intellectual property arch rival, Cupertino wants to wring out every drop of money it can.
Apple is looking to bar Samsung executives with knowledge of leaked confidential information from negotiating any mobile device licenses for the next two years.The U.S. District Court is currently considering imposing sanctions against Samsung and its lawyers due to concerns that the company’s law firm, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, may have shared confidential information from Apple with Samsung — including information about Apple’s patent licensing agreements with Nokia, Ericsson, Sharp and Philips, which was marked as viewable only by attorneys.
If you’ve been meaning to treat yourself to a Pebble smartwatch and you haven’t already blown all of your savings on other Black Friday deals, then you might be interested to know that you can now get $20 off the device for one day only.
It’s Magic 8-Ball time here, as analysts continue to round-out 2013 by making predictions about what we can expect over the next year.
This time it’s analyst Canalys, which is forecasting that tablets will out-ship almost all other PC form factors combined in 2014 — representing around 50 percent of the total client PC market.
Cult of Mac reported early today (or very late last night) that Samsung has been ordered to pay Apple $290 million in its patent trial for copying key features of iOS devices — bringing Apple’s total damages to $930 million.
According to two of the jurors assigned to the case, however, the key factor that swayed the jury in Apple’s favor came down to just one witness: Chicago-based certified public accountant, Julie L. Davis.
eBay’s Black Friday sale is set to start a day early this year, on Thursday, November 28 — and it includes a whole bunch of tablets, smartphones, consoles, and cameras. So whether you’re into Android or iOS, there’s a great deal to be had, such as an original iPad mini for $239, a Nexus 7 for $199, and the new iPad Air for $469.99.
We finally have a verdict in the high-profile Apple-Samsung patent infringement lawsuit, and it involves Samsung paying Apple $290 million for copying key features of both the iPhone and iPad for its own line of smartphones and tablets.
The jury’s verdict covers 13 of the 26 Samsung devices.
Apple’s re-trial with Samsung over patent infringement has just concluded with the federal jury ruling that Samsung owes Apple an extra $290 million for infringing on the iPhone maker’s patents.
The award is significantly more than the amount Samsung hoped to pay, though Apple’s lawyers didn’t get all the money they wanted either. Including damages awarded from the original trial, Samsung’s bill for Apple now totals $929.83 million worth damages – unless they successfully appeal of course.
The Samsung Galaxy Gear, an Android-powered smartwatch that Samsung has been calling “the next big thing” in commercials, is officially a dud. Why? After BusinessKorea reported that Samsung has sold less than 50,000 units to date, Samsung quickly tried to spin the bad news by saying that it had in fact sold 800,000 units, making it the “most sold wearable watch available in the market place.”
Right. The only problem is that Samsung later confirmed that the 800,000 number was actually for units shipped, not sold, which is a big difference.
Apple's marketing chief, Phil Schiller, is ready to shake up the advertising world
Since Apple won a $1 billion lawsuit against Samsung for patent infringement last summer, both companies have been fighting to determine how the ruling will actually unfold. In March of this year, the presiding judge for the case subtracted $450 million from what Samsung owed Apple due to the jury’s miscalculations for damages.
The Apple vs. Samsung retrial kicked off earlier this week in California court, and Apple requested an additional $380 in damages from Samsung on top of the $600 million already owed. Samsung believes it should only have to pay Apple $52 million for infringing on five patents related to the iPhone.
Today Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing, took the stand in court to talk about the iPhone’s importance to Apple, calling it a “bet-the-company” product. He also got pretty snarky about Samsung copying Apple.
Schiller began his testimony by recounting the original iPhone’s launch and the product’s success to date. He expressed frustration that Samsung started making phones that looked just like the iPhone after Apple started seeing success in the smartphone market. Schiller said he was “quite shocked” when he first saw the Samsung Galaxy. “My first thought was, ‘They’ve copied the iPhone.'”
These first few years of the iPhone’s existence have been “an incredibly important time” for Apple, said Schiller. And Samsung’s infringement has made it “harder for us to get new customers and bring them into our ecosystem.” The iPhone is Apple’s biggest money-maker by far. “At this point, it’s fair to say that most everyone at Apple works on iPhone,” said Schiller from the stand. “It’s our biggest product.”
While being cross-examined by Samsung’s lawyers, Schiller gave off a little Jobsian snark with his responses:
Schiller on Samsung gaining while other android makers lost share. “One is copying. the other are not copying… as much.” #icourt
With the new Mac Pro, Apple has proven its serious about bringing at least some manufacturing back to the States. The next step, though, is chips, and a new report says that Apple is bringing chip fabrication of its A-series chips stateside at a new $6 billion facility in upstate New York. And Samsung is said to be involved.
What do you think of Siri? Laughable gimmick, or revolutionary interface of the future? Your answer to that question may well determine how excited you get about this: the engineer who oversaw Siri is now at Samsung, building their own Internet of Things API.
A judge has advised Samsung to prepare its defense after determining that the South Korean company probably violated a court order by leaking confidential Apple documents.
Apple provided Samsung with copies of its patent agreements with Nokia, Ericsson, Sharp, and Philips as part of the massive patent battle between the two that started last summer, but it seems the company ignored the protective order that said the information could only be used in the context of that case.
Apple’s iPhone 5s became the world’s first smartphone with a 64-bit processor when it launched this September, but as you might expect, it’ll have plenty of competitors next year. Unsurprisingly, some of those will come from Samsung, which is already planning 64-bit chips and 16-megapixel cameras for its 2014 flagships, according to industry sources.
Drumming up iBusiness on Nathan Road in Hong Kong.
I’m still a little woozy from the 14-hour plane ride from San Francisco, but at first glance this humming tech hub seems like Samsung territory.
For every 10 Galaxy Notes that metro riders are stumbling down the endless escalators watching TV shows or reading comics on, I’ve probably spotted one iPhone.
Apple has topped the list of world’s most valuable brands for the third straight year in a row, and is now worth almost twice as much as any other brand on the planet, Forbes reports. The Cupertino company is now valued at $104.3 billion, up 20 percent over last year, which puts it way out in front of Microsoft, Samsung, and even Google.
Will flexible, bendable smartphone screens ever become a reality? Samsung thinks so. In fact, if you ignore the hysterically douchetastic concept video they are using to promote the foldable Galaxy tablets of the future, Samsung says we should have folding displays on the market by 2015.
It might have been the unsaid mission statement for quite some time, but now top executive Shin Jong-kyun has puts his cards on the table, telling analysts that after overtaking Apple in smartphones, Samsung aims to be the world leader in tablet computers, too.
Shin noted that Samsung tablet sales will exceed 40 million units this year — more than doubling the sales in 2012.
“Samsung tablet shipments started to grow remarkably since the second half of last year,” he said.
Many people would have you believe that Apple is successful not because their products are superior, but because they’re advertising is. They actually have a point, but not in the way they mean. Yes, Apple’s advertising is superior, but it’s not because Apple spends loads on it. In fact, Apple’s advertising budget is far tinier than Microsoft and Samsung’s.
The iPhone 5s wasn’t the first smartphone to offer a fingerprint scanner, but it’s undoubtedly the most popular one to date. In fact, it’s so popular that Touch ID is now driving massive growth in the smartphone fingerprint scanner market, with sales of fingerprint scanning handsets expected to reach 525 million units in 2017.
