Samsung - page 31

Apple is playing off TSMC against Samsung to negotiate better prices for its A9 chips for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, according to a new report.

Competition between TSMC and Samsung to win Apple’s business has been fierce over the past year, with the conflict even going as far as a lawsuit over the alleged leaking of trade secrets.

With both companies having the 14/16nm FinFET process capacity to build A9 chips to Apple’s specifications, Apple is reportedly asking both sides to cut their prices — or potentially lose out on future business.

After the discovery of several dangerous flaws in a few short weeks, Android’s security — or lack thereof — has been big news. Google has acted quickly to eliminate the Stagefright flaw that left 95% of Android devices vulnerable to attack, but others have since wormed their way out of the woodwork.

Now fans are asking how these flaws made their way into public Android releases, compromising the security of more than 1 billion users worldwide. Could Google be doing more to prevent it? And are its hardware partners doing all they can to patch holes in their own software?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we fight it out over these questions and more!

Google will finally launch Android Pay, its brand new mobile payments service, alongside a refreshed Nexus 5 from LG in October, a new report claims. The Apple Pay competitor will take advantage of Android M’s native support for fingerprint scanners.

Samsung has been mercilessly copying Apple’s software, hardware and marketing for years, but the most unoriginal company in tech has taken its copycat ways to an all new level by ripping off Steve Jobs’ signature look.

In a recent promotional headshot for his upcoming appearance at the DMEXCO conference in Germany, Samsung VP Georg R. Rötzer not only copied Jobs’ dark outfit and round spectacles — he also aped the Apple co-founder’s pose from the cover of Walter Isaacson’s biography.

Apple signed a lease for 300,000 square feet of office space in San Jose last month, but the company might be eyeing a bigger expansion in the city, according to a new report that Apple just purchased a massive development site in North San Jose.

In a deal worth more than $138 million, Apple has purchased 43 acres of land at 2347 North First St., according to documents obtained by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Apple has yet to announce its plans for the property, but it will be the company’s first significant presence into San Jose in decades.

Here’s a map of the land Apple just bought:

Xiaomi is once again China’s top smartphone firm, pushing Apple down to third place despite its immensely strong quarter, and Samsung to either fourth or fifth position.

Huawei and Vivo rounded out the top five, in second and fourth/fifth place respectively.

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Looks like Samsung and Apple pretty much own the smartphone market, though there are some scrappy contenders starting to make headway.

According to International Data Corporation (IDC), handset makers shipped a total of 337.2 million smartphones worldwide in the last quarter of 2015 (Q2). This is up 11.6 percent from last year, an amazing bit of growth considering how many smartphones are already on the loose.

A number of Silicon Valley technology giants have backed Samsung in its legal battle against Apple. Documents confirm Dell, eBay, Facebook, Google, and HP all took the South Korean company’s side in a “friend of the court” brief on July 1.

Having spent the best part of 2015 battling over who would win orders from Apple, TSMC and Samsung have both started volume production of the new A9 chips for the upcoming iPhone 6s, according to a new report.

Samsung phones have been bogged-down with bloatware for as long as they’ve been around, but a Chinese consumer protection group is doing more than just complain about it — by suing Samsung and another Chinese vendor, Oppo, for loading their phones with literally dozens of pre-installed apps which are impossible to delete.

The consumer protection group wants to make it illegal for the smartphone industry to include bloatware on devices since it fills us phones’ internal memory and gives customers no choice in the matter.

Apple is turning to both long-time manufacturing partner Sharp and long-time “frenemy” Samsung to help build the displays for its eagerly-anticipated 12.9-inch giant-sized iPad Pro, according to a new report.

Sharp is said to have provided a small test batch of the enormous 264ppi, 2,732×2,048 displays in June, which met with Apple’s high production standards. However, Cupertino is also said to have given Samsung a back-up role building screen panels — suggesting that Apple is expecting big things with this next-gen device. Pun intended.

You can call it customer loyalty, brand stickiness, or whatever other terms the cool marketing kids are using these days, but it all means the same thing in this case: Apple is doing a better job than Samsung of retaining customers and winning over new ones.

This is according to a report from RBC Capital Markets, which polled Apple and Samsung customers about their current and future purchases.

Samsung is reportedly making a bid to steal away Toshiba’s job of producing the flash memory chips for the iPhone 6s — something which would help out the South Korean tech giant at a time when its own mobile business is struggling.

The news follows not long after reports that the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus is looking to add faster TLC-based NAND flash storage for the next-gen handsets, possibly en route to ditching the largely-useless 16GB entry level storage option in current iPhones.

Tesla Motors is the smartest company in the world, according to MIT Tech Review’s latest survey of the brainiest corporations. Apple, which was not on last year’s list returns at number 16, beating out other firms like ride-sharing company Uber and smartbulb-maker Philips. MIT cites the newly released Apple Watch and touchless payment method Apple Pay as its reasons for inclusion, saying that these two products “set the pace for competitors.”

You can see the full list of smartiespants in the table below.

Samsung is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to cut more money off the $930 million Apple won in a patent lawsuit. The company is arguing that the appeals court’s earlier ruling is still unfair, even after successfully convincing the panel to chop off $382 million already.

Sales of the Galaxy S 6 haven’t been as great as Samsung would have hoped, so the company is going back to what it does best: desperately make fun of the iPhone.

The company released two new ads for the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge touting the phones’ wireless charging, wide angle selfies, and curved display that shows texts and emails and other info, while the iPhone 6 just has a boring metal edge with buttons.

You can watch both ads below:

Although it’s poised to win the smart home war eventually, Apple’s HomeKit is still half-baked. Case in point: hardly any smart home accessories officially integrate with it yet, let alone Apple’s own products.

Despite its parent company’s rivalry with Apple in the smartphone race, the SmartThings platform has beat HomeKit to the Apple Watch, and it makes the idea of controlling your home from your wrist look pretty useful.

Manny Pacquiao is expected to have made $80 million off the very boring ‘fight of the Century’ this past weekend just off the ticket sales. Pac-Man made a few extra million on the side too by becoming the latest iPhone-loving celebrity to convert to a Samsung salesman.

As part of the sponsorship, Pacquiao – who’s tweeted from an iPhone from years – crafted his tweets on a Samsung Galaxy S6, including two selfies he posted at weigh-in and on his way to the ring with Jimmy Kimmel. Samsung also filmed an entire behind-the-scenes video of Pacquiao on a Galaxy S6 Edge. But now that the fight’s over and Pac-Man’s cashed in, he’s back to using Apple devices.

Here’s the Samsung spokesman’s latest tweet, sent from an iPhone.

Want to sum up the difference between Apple and Samsung in a single image?

Don’t look at the logos. Don’t look at the operating systems. Don’t even look at what their respective gadgets look like.

Look at the lines. Look at the symmetry. Because Samsung can’t even get these basic things right.

Once you start looking closely, even Samsung’s best phones look like they were designed by a kindergartner.

Foxconn’s CEO Terry Gou is no fan of Samsung. In fact, according to a new report, he’s been trying to use his influence as Apple’s biggest manufacturing partner to get Apple to lessen its dependency on Samsung — while a giving a shot to other companies.

The reason? He thinks Taiwanese manufacturers need to work together to overcome the growing threat of the South Korean tech giant, which could potentially swallow all of their jobs.

Want to sum up the difference between Apple and Samsung in a single image?

Don’t look at the logos. Don’t look at the operating systems. Don’t even look at what their respective gadgets look like.

Look at the lines. Look at the symmetry. Because Samsung can’t even get these basic things right.

Once you start looking closely, even Samsung’s best phones look like they were designed by a kindergartner.

Anyone who dreams of Apple giving a “This is Sparta!”-style thrust-kick to rival Samsung, forever booting it out of Cupertino’s production process, is going to be sorely disappointed.

If anything, Apple’s leaning more heavily than ever on its longtime frenemy, with new reports claiming Samsung created a standalone team of around 200 employees dedicated exclusively to building new screens for iPads, MacBooks and possibly future Apple Watches.

Samsung’s not had too much luck with smartwatches, but a newly-published patent application shows that it’s not ready to throw in the towel just yet.

The patent describes what is less a traditional watch than a wristband or He-Man-style manacle. It features a wraparound widescreen display, able to function in both bent and flat states, and describes its possible applications as multimedia viewing and communication.

After all, you never know when you’ll need to summon Battle Cat to help in your ongoing war with Skeletor and his cronies!

Update: Samsung has denied the report, claiming that all invitees were “formally invited to the Shanghai Culture Square where the event took place.”

Samsung is trying to match the iPhone 6 in every way with the launch on the Galaxy S6. That includes pre-launch hype with over 1,000 people at events clamoring for a look at the new flagship phone, but in Samsung’s case, it has to pay for fans to show up.

Over 500 fake fans were paid to attend Samsung’s launch event for the Galaxy S6 in China on Friday. The total attendance reached around 1,000, but with the meager $4.80 Samsung shelled out to anyone under who looked like a student under 30, and could sit through one hour of the keynote.

The battle over who will manufacture the A9 chip for Apple’s next-gen iPhone has reportedly come to a close, with Apple giving the nod to long-time frenemy Samsung instead of current A8 chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).