Apple has moved up to number 19 in the latest Fortune Global 500 survey thanks to its financial performance throughout 2012, which saw the Cupertino company collect $157 billion in revenue. The iPhone 5 and the iPad mini have been credited for its success over the past 12 months.
Iceland is so cool. Or weird. Or both.
The land that brought us Bjork and her oddly compelling musical artistry has a new commercial for the Samsung Galaxy S4 that–quite literally–takes a bite out of Apple.
The short ad begins with a poor, sad, white guy in a nice warm vest sitting on a mountainside in what I presume to be Iceland. He’s tapping and listening to an apple. Not an Apple, mind you, but an actual apple, as in the fruit.
After some confused facial gestures, the man is shown smiling and using a Samsung Galaxy S4 device.
That’s when it gets weird.
In the ongoing smartphone culture wars, Samsung spent a reported $5 million engaging the latest song stylings of Jay-Z as an exclusive for Galaxy owners.
Owners of that phone contended for a million copies of the impressively-titled album “Magna Carta Holy Grail” launched July 4 in a special app, three days before the rest of us can get it in iTunes. Media saw the promotion as a tactical move by Samsung to gain position on the music front over Apple.
The cachet lasted about as long as a cheap sparkler: there are thousands of torrents of the album available.
As one of the guys who decided to spread the work of Beyoncé’s husband up for everyone put it: “I should clarify it was available to the first million (I think…) Samsung Galaxy owners to chime in with an app for the album. My wife got it but I’m not rocking a Samsung :/”
Apple is expected to launch a new smartwatch called the “iWatch” as early as this fall, and we already know that it could face competition from Samsung, Google, Microsoft, and LG. But there’s another competitor that may want a piece of the pie: Dell.
Apple’s iPhone 5 is “the most hated handset” currently available, receiving the most criticism on social networks, reports British tabloid The Daily Mail. Its biggest rival, the Samsung Galaxy S4, is the most loved — receiving just 11% of the complaints.
Samsung has produced a new Galaxy S4 commercial for Iceland, and it’s possibly one of its weirdest smartphone adverts yet. It features some really strange dancing from a bunch of unconvincing ninjas, and a less than subtle dig at Apple using real apples.
Details are short on the ground, but The New York Times’ Brian X. Chen is reporting on Twitter that Samsung has purchaseds Boxee, maker of the Boxee Box, one of the Apple TV’s main competitors.
“In today’s world, there’s no reason not to be constantly simulated,” says Samsung. “With Apex, you can be constantly watching movies, browsing Facebook, and receiving head from a robotic mouth, all at the same time.”
An absolutely priceless Onion News Network video, with perhaps the best headline of all time: “New Wearable Computer Also Sucks Your Dick.” Check out the video after the jump.
Android’s share of the worldwide smartphone market may be sizably bigger than that of its rivals, but when it comes to mobile advertising, iOS remains king. According to the latest data from mobile ad firm Velti, Apple’s share grew from 59% to 64% between May 2012 and May 2013.
Apple and Samsung are heated rivals when it comes to selling smartphones and tablets, but the two companies are still in bed behind the scenes. Samsung makes the majority of Apple’s processors for the iPhone and iPad, and there hasn’t been another manufacturer that’s capable of replacing Samsung’s assembly line prowess.
Moves are being made to distance Samsung from the iPhone’s guts, however. A deal with TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing) has been struck for Apple’s mobile processors. TSMC will start making a chunk of the ‘A’ series chips for Apple in 2014, but Samsung is still supplying the bulk of the orders.
The Wall Street Journal confirmed the deal over this past weekend after Digitimes recently said that TSMC will start making upcoming chips for Apple’s next-gen devices. “TSMC plans to start mass-producing the chips early next year using advanced “20-nanometer” technology, which makes the chips potentially smaller and more energy-efficient,” according to the Journal.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Apple is in the middle of negotiations to launch an iPhone 5S with LTE-Advanced technology on SK Telecom, according to an unnamed executive for the Korean carrier. The news comes just days after Samsung announced a new Galaxy S4 variant with LTE-Advanced, which is an upgraded version of LTE that promises faster data speeds.
HP famously gave up on its smartphone and tablet business back in 2011 when it announced that it would no longer be developing hardware powered by its webOS platform. But two years later, the company is planning to have another crack at it.
Yam Su Yin, HP’s Senior Director of Consumer PCs and Tablets, has confirmed that the company is already working on a new smartphone — one that will deliver a unique experience that you won’t get from its rivals.
Apple has applied for the “iWatch” trademark in Japan following months of speculation that has claimed the company will launch its first smartwatch later this year. According to the June 3 filing with the Japan Patent Office, which was spotted by Bloomberg, the iWatch name will cover products including “a handheld computer or watch device.”
Apple is stil the top smartphone maker in the U.S. according to the latest quarterly report from comScore. While HTC, Motorola, and LTG continued to lose marketshare in the U.S. over the last three months, Apple and Samsung have continued to outpace the competition.
As of May 2013, comScore found that the iPhone now accounts for 39.2% of the U.S. smartphone marketshare. Even though Apple has the lead in hardware, Android is still the top ranking smartphone platform in the U.S. with 52.4 percent market share.
Here’s how Apple stacks up against the competition:
While the iPhone has been slowly making its way to carriers all over the world since its release in 2007, there are still a number of major operators that are yet to offer it. One of those is China Mobile, the world’s largest carrier with over 800 million subscribers; and another is DoCoMo, a Japanese carrier that serves almost half of the country’s mobile market.
But DoCoMo isn’t at all concerned, even though it’s losing customers to other carriers that do offer Apple’s device. A company executive has acknowledged that the iPhone is an “attractive” device, but points out that it also comes with some disadvantages, and insists that the latest Android-powered offerings are just as good.
Apple has lost its bid to add the new Galaxy S4 to its ongoing patent lawsuit against Samsung. U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal said that adding yet another device to the case is a “tax on the court’s resources,” and that it takes time away from other parties who require the court’s attention.
Apple has added a new promotional page to its website for iOS 7, targeting business users who will be using iPhones and iPads in a professional capacity. “iOS 7 offers more advanced ways to deploy devices and deliver a great user experience for your employees,” the Cupertino company says, before highlighting the many ways in which iOS 7 can benefit business users.
The iPhone 5 has been branded the “slowest smartphone” by Which? magazine after going up against its latest rivals in a group of tests that evaluate processing power and graphics capabilities. The Galaxy S4, Samsung’s latest Android-powered flagship, came out top in the tests, with a rating almost double that of the iPhone’s.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has reached a deal with Apple to supply its next-generation A8, A9, and A9X processors for iOS devices, according to industry sources. The company will reportedly begin manufacturing the chips using a 20-nanometer process, then upgrade to 16-nanometer and later 10-nanometer processes in the future.
A Tokyo court has today found Samsung guilty of infringing an Apple “bounce-back” or “rubber banding” patent that covers the popular scrolling feature built into its iOS platform. Apple has been using the patent against Samsung in a number of courtrooms all over the world, but back in April, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office deemed it invalid.
NEC became the world’s first and only smartphone manufacturer to launch a liquid-cooled handset back in May, but it may quickly lose that claim later this year. According to some sources, a number of high-profile smartphones makers, including Apple, Samsung, and HTC, will be launching their own liquid-cooled devices in the fourth quarter.
If Apple is going to update the iPad mini with a Retina Display a year after it’s debut, they need to get cracking on sourcing the 2,048 x 1,536 resolution, 7.9-inch displays that will drive them. Now a new rumor suggests that Apple has contracted good ol’ frenemy Samsung to make them for them.
While competing smartphone manufacturers are producing devices in a whole host of different sizes, Apple’s iPhone has had only two screen sizes in its six-year history. But according to four sources with knowledge of Apple’s plans, who have been speaking to Reuters, the Cupertino company is “considering” iPhones with 4.7-inch and 5.7-inch displays.
It is also said to be working on a cheaper iPhone that will come in a range of different colors.
At a glance, Apple’s latest MacBook Air notebooks appear identical to their predecessors, but when you take a look under the hood, there are some obvious differences. Not only do they boast Intel’s latest Haswell processors, but they also have larger capacity batteries and smaller solid-state flash drives.
The New York Attorney General has called for Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft to invent new ways to curb the ongoing smartphone theft “epidemic.” Eric Schneiderman wants meetings with representatives from all four companies, and he has urged them to “be as innovative in solving this problem as they have been in designing devices that have reshaped how we live.”