Apple is beginning to close the gap on Samsung over shipments of smart connected devices, which includes computers, smartphones, and tablets. The Cupertino company grabbed 20.3% of the market by the end of 2012, according to IDC, while Samsung just about had the edge with a 21.2% share.
There’s been a lot of buzzing lately about Samsung’s hot new Galaxy S4 phone and its gimmicky cutting-edge new features. But bizarre air gestures aside, we’ll tell you which of its features we’d love to see Apple “borrow” for iPhone 6 on our all-new CultCast.
Plus, a new Steve Jobs movie you’ll actually want to see; and, is it possible for Apple for make a device more perfect than the iPad mini?
All that and more on this episode of the CultCast! Subscribe nowon iTunes to download our new episodes, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s newly updated Podcasts App.
Or, you know, just hit play below.
LG will compete with Apple, Google, and Samsung with a smartwatch of its own that is expected to run Google’s Android operating system. The company is also said to be working on another wearable computing device that will reportedly rival Google Glass.
The Google Glass project has been in the news a fair bit in recent months, but it seems Google may have another wearable gadget in development that’s been flying under the radar. The Financial Times reports that just like Apple and Samsung, the search giant is working on its own smartwatch that will act as an extension to the smartphone.
Apple is set to deal Samsung yet another blow by snubbing its displays for all future iOS devices. According to a new report from the Korea Economic Daily, the Cupertino company will purchase panels from Sharp, LG Display, Japan Display, and AU Optronics instead.
Samsung’s Android smartphones have this nifty feature that lets you quickly make calls from within contact cards and messages simply by raising the device to your ear. And thanks to a new tweak called RaiseToCall, you can now get the same feature on your jailbroken iPhone.
Its plastic chassis may feel cheaper than the iPhone 5’s glass-and-aluminum materials, but Samsung’s new Galaxy S4 smartphone actually costs significantly more to make. In fact, almost 20% more.
One of the biggest complaints about Android, is that Google will announce a new version of Android, but then it takes over six months for that software to actually get on your phone. What gives?
The guys over at Gizmodo decided to talk to both manufacturers and wireless carriers to find out what’s the hold up. It seems like a software update would be a pretty straightforward process, but what they found was a myriad of problems that can take months to answer before your Android phone gets an update.
Apple is expected to unveil its first smartwatch sometime this year, and there’s one company who will be right on its tail, competing for sales. As you may have already guessed, that company is Samsung.
Lee Young Hee, executive vice president of the Korean company’s mobile business, confirmed the move during an interview with Bloomberg.
Samsung has already explained its love for plastic, and why it chose to stick with it for the flagship Galaxy S4. But after receiving a lot of criticism for that decision, the company’s head of design, Dennis Miloseski, was forced to defend the Galaxy S4’s plastic build once again at Engadget’s Expand conference in San Francisco this weekend.
In response to Samsung’s Galaxy S4 announcement last Thursday, Apple has updated the iPhone 5 pages of its website to remind visitors why people love the iPhone. “Loving it is easy. That’s why so many people do,” the landing page reads, before going on to list all the reasons why the Cupertino company’s smartphone is so popular.
At one point during Samsung’s tacky Galaxy SIV launch event at the Radio City Music Hall in New York, the emcee — upon asking what the point of a screen that could react to gestures in mid-air without actually touching it, and being treated to a Greek chorus of answers from a constabulary of shrill, histrionic shrews — said of Samsungs new Air Gestures: “Okay, I see how that might be useful.”
Those words really sum up everything Samsung put up on stage tonight. I see how that might be useful.
The Galaxy SIV is a phone largely unchanged from the SIII. It’s a little thinner, a little lighter, a little more powerful. It has a bunch of new features. And all of them require a small one-act play on one of the most important stages in Manhattan to explain why, in a certain circumstance, they might be useful.
The Galaxy SIV is official, and it is a beautiful powerhouse of a phone with features unseen in any other device, but how does Samsung’s latest flagship phone stack up against the competition, spec-by-spec? Check out the chart below to find out.
Tonight at Radio City Music Hall in New York, Samsung unveiled the latest version of its flagship Android phone, the Galaxy S4, the successor to Samsung’s super popular Galaxy SIII. The first thing you may notice is how similar the new S4 looks to the SIII. It’s nearly the same size, even wiht a bigger 5-inch, 1080p Super AMOLED screen: the first such in a mobile phone.
It’s coming.
At 7:30PM Eastern tonight at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City, Samsung is expected to unveil their newest flagship phone, the Galaxy SIV. This is going to be a heck of an event: not only is Samsung about to unveil the most important Android phone out there, but the Galaxy SIV is going to be the device most likely to challenge the iPhone 5 as the most popular smartphone out there. Apple knows this, and they’re clearly worried enough to be denouncing the Galaxy SIV before it’s even official.
In short, whether you love Android or you love Apple, this is a device you’re going to want to know all about, which is why we’ll be at Samsung’s event today, live-blogging the announcement from the scene.
There has been an ungodly amount of talk in recent months about how Apple is losing its edge to Samsung. Even some of Apple’s most faithful analysts have said that Samsung is more innovative now than Apple, but is that really true?
In the Cult of Mac chat room this afternoon, we found this video of Gene Munster saying Samsung is innovating faster than Apple. Some of us agreed with him, while others didn’t. What followed was a great discussion of what innovation really means, and whether Samsung is beating Apple. Rather than composing it into an article, we’re just going to post our chat and see what you guys think. Does Samsung really innovate faster than Apple now?
It seems you can’t go anywhere these days without seeing an advert for the iPhone. They’re on billboards in the street, they’re there when you switch on the TV, and you’ll also find them in newspapers and magazines. But believe it or not, there’s one company that spends more — a lot more! — on advertising its smartphones than Apple does.
That company is Samsung. In 2012, Samsung outspent Apple by more than three to one in smartphone advertising, with a number of large campaigns on TV, in print, and on the Internet. In total, the Korean company spent $401 million advertising its phones.
A questionable rumor from Digitimes suggests that Intel might make 10% of all of Apple’s A7 processors. If the rumor’s true, though, here’s how it would probably play out.
Being in business with Apple can’t be all that bad right now. Despite a report this morning that claimed Apple’s suppliers experienced weak sales in February, there are a few Apple suppliers that are hiring more employees to meet demand.
Both TSMC and Hon Hai are looking to hire 5,000 new employees, which might mean that Apple really is looking to ditch Samsung in favor of TSMC.
The Apple TV, Cupertino’s “hobby” of a set-top box, is often used to test out new fabrication process for the A-series chips that go into iPhones, iPod touches and iPads. The last Apple TV ran a 32nm A5 processor built by Samsung with a single-core disabled, which eventually ended up (in a dual-core capacity) in the iPad mini.
With the new third-gen Apple TV, Apple’s at it again. The new Apple TV is functionally and physically identical to its predecessor, except for one detail: it features a 28nm A5 chip built by TSMC. But what does it mean?
Samsung smartphones outsold those from rivals Apple, Nokia, and Lenovo in China throughout 2012, allowing the Korean company to claim the biggest share of the Chinese smartphone market, according to the latest report from Strategy Analytics.
Nokia had claimed the top spot in 2011, but the Finnish firm has struggled to compete with Samsung’s Galaxy devices this time around, and couldn’t even make its way into the top five.
In case you’ve missed it, there are currently two cases being heard by US District Judge Lucy Koh in the Apple v Samsung patent legal struggle. The first one, Apple won a $1.05 billion verdict last fall against Samsung, which Judge Koh pulled about $450 million off of, and then ordered a new damages trial. She also rejected Apple’s request for a permanent sales ban. Apple appealed, but we’re waiting for a ruling till September, most likely.
Apple and Samsung are both looking to bring wireless charging to their smartphones this year, following in the footsteps of rivals like Nokia, LG, and HTC. The feature will come to flagship devices, such as the upcoming Galaxy S IV, according to industry sources who have been speaking to DigiTimes.
Samsung has today lost its High Court battle against Apple in the United Kingdom after a judge deemed that the patents the Korean company was using in its case should have never been granted.
Apple has now fended off 24 patent-infringement claims from Samsung, and Samsung’s bid to secure a 2.4% royalty on every 3G-equipped device the Cupertino company sells is looking increasingly unlikely.
Nokia has sided with Apple in an effort to help the Cupertino company in its fight against Samsung. The Finnish firm filed an amicus brief on behalf of Apple in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Monday, asking the court to permit permanent injunctions on the sale of Samsung smartphones that were found guilty of infringing Apple’s patents.