LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – We’re always a bit stumped at how PhoneSuit is able to stuff so much battery in to their batteries. Their new Flex line is another great example; those little battery logs above each contain 2600 mAh of juice, which is more than any iPhone battery case I can think of. And that’s not even the coolest thing about them.
Amazon has today launched a new music service called AutoRip, which offers customers a free MP3 version of every album they’ve bought on CD from Amazon since 1998. The service currently boasts more than 50,000 digital albums from all the major record labels, and Amazon insists that new titles are added on a regular basis.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Every year Samsung attends CES it seems like they try to guess what Apple is going to do with TV. One year they announced a TV that has Netflix and other apps built in. The next they included swappable processors and voice controls.
This year, Samsung’s bet is that if Apple ever decides to make a TV it will be able to predict what you want to watch. It will help you find out where to buy an actor’s clothes. And it might come in a soccer goal shaped frame?
Apple is one of just two smartphone makers currently seeing any kind of growth in the United States at the moment, and together with Samsung the company is slowly but surely clawing away at the market share held by the likes of LG, Motorola, and HTC. One analyst believes, however, that the Cupertino must make big changes if it wants that growth to continue.
Apple’s either has to dramatically reduce its iPhone profit margins and make the handset cheaper, or face losing valuable market share to cheaper smartphones.
As Samsung improves its cellphones by adding proper cameras, so it is tweaking its cameras to make them more like pocket computers. The new mirrorless flagship NX300 adds better Wi-Fi connectivity and a massive 3.3-inch, 768,000-dot 16:9 touchscreen.
It’s hard to believe we’ve just finished our 50th CultCast! But we’re not stopping to celebrate just yet.
On our newest episode, we say why Apple Maps integrating with Waze maps makes too much sense not to happen; why Bill Gates just made Microsoft Surface the new Christmas coal; and as we prepare to journey to Las Vegas for CES, we review which new gadgets and tech we’re most excited about, and give you the inside scoop on what it’s really like to report live from one of the biggest tech conventions in the world.
All that and more on our all-new CultCast! Subscribe now on iTunes or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.
Samsung and Apple are the only two smartphone vendors currently seeing growth in the United States, and although it was Apple that saw the most between September and November of last year, it’s Samsung who will attract most customers throughout 2013. The Korean electronics giant will see 35% growth over the next 12 months, according to Strategy Analytics, further increasing the lead over its arch rival in Cupertino.
Apple and Samsung are the only two smartphone manufacturers currently seeing any growth in the United States. The pair are slowly eating away at the market share held by their rivals, including LG, Motorola, Research in Motion, and HTC. In the three months leading up to November 2012, Samsung increased its market share from 25.7% to 26.9%, but Apple is catching up with the Cupertino company enjoying slightly more growth.
This could be the first ripple of a very big wave: the Commercial Times out of Taiwan is claiming that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (or TSMC) is about to start trial production for Apple’s A6X SoC this quarter.
Why is this a big deal? Apple’s arch-nemesis Samsung currently manufacturers the A6X chip… and it might herald Apple shifting all of its multi-billion dollar chip business away.
Samsung’s request to keep some of its sales data sealed in an ongoing patent dispute with Apple in the United States has been denied by District Judge Lucy Koh. The Korean electronics giant wanted to keep its figures secret while it appeals an earlier sealing order, but it will now have to disclose the information to Apple.
2012 was a very different year for Apple. For starters, it was Tim Cook’s first year as CEO. While much of Apple has remained the same, Cook has definitely shown that he is a different type of leader than his predecessor. Apple is evolving into something new.
Between four press events and the Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Apple announced an unprecedented slew of new products in 2012. Every single major product was refreshed to some extent, which leaves even more speculation as to what Apple has up its sleeve for 2013.
There have been key executive firings and hirings, heated lawsuits, and scandals. In the midst of everything, Apple managed to become the most valuable company on earth.
While there are many big Apple moments from this past year, we’ve gathered what we think are the 10 most notable stories. Here they are:
Thanks to affordable offerings like the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and the Google Nexus 7, Android tablets continue to increase their market share and claw away at the iPad’s lead. However, Apple’s tablet remains king of the web, accounting for a whopping 87% of tablet web traffic in North America.
Apple and Samsung have been raging a legal war against each other across the globe. While Apple won a $1 billion lawsuit against Samsung in the U.S. earlier this year, the two giants have exchanged blows in Europe as well, but neither side has come out on top yet.
However, a new report claims that Samsung might be facing a serious blow from the European commission that is seeking to impose some huge fines on Samsung for trying to get Apple products banned in Europe.
While Apple fans will argue that Android copied iOS, it’s hard to deny that Apple didn’t take a little bit of inspiration back from from Android, too. Its Notification Center is an almost identical copy of Android’s — that’s easy to see no matter which side of the fence you’re on. In fact, Samsung’s now using this as another reason to sue Apple in South Korea.
One doesn’t see too many battery cases for the Galaxy S3. Unlike the glass-fortress iPhone — for which battery-cases are more numerous than species of bird — the S3’s battery is easily removable, somewhat lessening the usefulness of an external battery. But that didn’t stop iWalk from coming out with the Chameleon Easy, an impossibly sleek monster of a battery case with 2800 mAh on tap — which iWalk says is the highest capacity of any S3 battery to date.
Apple’s quest for litigation has resulted in a few wins and a few loses. However, it would seem the big picture isn’t looking so good for Apple. The very patents Apple has been attempting to assert in its litigation crusade are now coming under high scrutiny and slowly being invalidated.
The European Commission’s Vice President for Competition Policy, Joaquín Almunia, has confirmed that it will charge Samsung “very soon” in an antitrust patent case after the Korean electronics giant broke competition rules by filing patent-infringement lawsuits against Apple. Samsung has been under investigation since January for a possible breach of antitrust rules, and earlier this week, it dropped all of its injunction requests against Apple in Europe.
Korean electronics giant Samsung has today announced that it will drop its patent-infringement lawsuits against Apple in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The announcement comes just hours after Apple was denied its request to have 26 Samsung devices banned in the United States — though the two cases are unrelated.
Another chapter has closed in the Apple/Samsung patent saga thanks to a couple decisions handed down today by Judge Lucy Koh. Apple has been denied its bid for a permanent sales ban against the 26 Samsung devices found to have infringed on a handful of Apple’s patents back in August. According to the Koh, those infringed patents are but a small fraction of the overall features that make up Samsung’s devices and thus do not warrant a permanent ban.
Samsung might be Apple’s biggest rival, but it’s clear to see the Korean company loves its work. It’s been trying to make its Android smartphones more like the iPhone for many years — that’s hard to deny, no matter whose side you’re on — and it’s spawned retail stores, tablets, and even charging adapters that are remarkably similar to those form the Cupertino company.
Even Samsung’s executives can’t fight their love of Mac and iOS devices. One, Young Sohn, a chief strategy officer, admits to using a Mac, iPhone, and iPad at home, and praises Apple’s unique ecosystem.
The United Kingdom is a little late to 4G — just a few months ago, 4G networks didn’t exist. Now it has one, EE, which is quickly trying to expand its 4G coverage across the country. It began its rollout in 11 major cities, and the company has announced today that it will be reaching an additional 17 by March 2013.
A new report from Reuters takes to the streets (or, malls, rather) of the globe to find out what folks are actually purchasing from retail shops around the world, including Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung retail spaces in cities like Sydney, Seattle, Palo Alto, Shanghai, Bangalore, Singaporte, Paris, London, Mexico City, and Boston. They spoke to store employees and retail shoppers to find out, really, what’s selling and what’s not.
Guess what they found out? While Apple may be the darling of naysayers who like to crow about the stock slippage or the competition from Android and (sometimes) Windows Phones, Reuters found that the people they talked to and the stores they visited were far from anti-Apple, and, in fact, positively glowing about the Cupertino-based tech company’s products.
Using Apple Maps in Australia is freaking dangerous. Like, if you’re just trying to get directions to your girlfriend’s aunt’s house, you might get navigated to a cave full a flesh-eating mutant wallabies. Or it might just navigate you off the road and into the wilderness if you’re not paying attention to where you’re driving, but whatever.
Samsung has decided that Apple’s Map fiasco in Australia should not go unnoticed, so they’ve created a guerrilla marketing campaign to lure people into using a Samsung Galaxy SIII because it has dependable maps.
Glassdoor, a jobs and career community, releases a list of the best places to work for every year. A lot of other websites comprise similar lists, but what makes Glassdoor’s list unique is that it’s based on feedback from anonymous employees who actually work at the companies.
For the last three years Facebook has been in the top three while Apple has appeared in the number spot in the past as well. For 2013 Glassdoor ranked Apple as the 34th best place to work at, while Facebook grabbed the number one spot.
A group of high-tech companies, including Samsung, Apple, Research In Motion, Intel, and others petitioned the US Congress today to provide more broadcast bandwidth, ostensibly for smartphones and tablets like the Galaxy, iPhone, Nexus, and iPad. The group sent a letter to both House and Senate technology committees, asking them to auction off some of the spectrum that is being used by the federal government.