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.
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.
While the iPad’s Retina display has traditionally been considered the finest tablet display on the market, that’s no longer the case thanks to Amazon. Its new high-end Kindle Fire HDX has the best tablet display ever tested by DisplayMate expert Dr. Raymond Soneira, “significantly outperforming” the iPad Air’s in several key areas.
Last week, we reported that Samsung had beaten Apple and claimed the top spot in J.D. Power’s latest tablet satisfaction survey. On closer inspection of its findings, it was unclear how the South Korean company had earned first place after its tablets received lower ratings than the iPad in so many areas.
J.D. Power has since explained why that’s the case.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un might be an Apple user, but that doesn’t mean that North Korea’s state-run computer agency doesn’t see the value of launching a tablet of its own.
Costing around $250, the Korea Computer Center’s Samjiyon SA-70 has a 7-inch screen with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, 1 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, 4 GB internal memory, and a card slot equipped with an 8 GB micro SD memory card. There is also a 2 mega pixel camera, microphone, gyro sensor. Currently there’s no way to connect to the Internet, although there is an extendable antenna for receiving state television signals.
Following on from the news that Samsung shipped 2.6x the number of smartphones that Apple did last quarter, new figures released by research firm IDC show that Samsung tablet shipments grew by 123% to 9.7 million tablets over the same period. While Apple still leads the way with 29.6% of the tablet market, this is down considerably from the 40.2% share the company captured during this same quarter last year. Samsung meanwhile holds a company record 20.4% of the market, while Asus holds 7.4% (representing a 53% year on year increase). The two biggest growth companies for tablets are Acer and Lenovo — with their shipments increasing 346% and 420% respectively to represent 0.9% and 1.1% of the overall market.
We reported it back in July and now there is confirmation: Steve Jobs-actor Ashton Kutcher has joined Lenovo to help launch its new Yoga tablet.
“This is not just another ‘me too’ tablet.” Kutcher said at a launch event for the Android device Tuesday night.
Apple isn’t the only consumer electronics giant hosting a major press event tomorrow. Nokia is also gearing up to make a number of big announcements at Nokia World in Abu Dhabi, and they won’t all be new Lumia smartphones.
The Finnish firm is also expected to unveil a Windows-powered iPad competitor with a 10.1-inch 1080p display — pictured above and below — and a new music player called the “Nokia Guru” that hopes to take on the iPod shuffle.
As promised, Microsoft has released its official Remote Desktop app for Android and iOS to coincide with the launch of Windows 8.1. The app is free to download and use, and just like the many third-party remote desktop clients, it allows you to access your Windows PC remotely from your smartphone or tablet.
Samsung has today unveiled Shape M7, a $400 wireless speaker that hopes to compete with the Sonos. It connects to your smartphone, tablet, or computer via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or NFC, and there’s a handy companion app that makes setup easy on Android and iOS devices.
The Hulu Plus apps for Android and iOS have today been updated with support for Google Chromecast. You’ll find a new ‘Cast’ button within the app that will stream your favorite shows to your television with the help of the $35 dongle.
Apple will be “unable” to launch a new iPad mini with Retina display this month due to supply constraints, according to sources in its supply chain, who have been speaking to Reuters. It’s thought the new device will only be available in “limited quantities” this year — if at all — and there’s a possibility it won’t be ready in time for the lucrative holiday shopping season.
At the Tokyo Games Show today, Sony unveiled its new PlayStation App for Android and iOS, which lets gamers access the PlayStation Network from their smartphone and tablet to interact with friends, see what others are playing, and remotely download games to your console.
The app will also turn your Android or iOS device into a second screen for selected PlayStation 4 titles.
While Apple has been getting dominated by Android in terms of the sheer number of smartphones sold, iOS users have still managed to capture the lion’s share of worldwide mobile web share company, but it looks like the size of their pie is shrinking.
According to the latest survey from NetApplications, iOS’s worldwide mobile web share has dropped 11% since August of 2012. While iOS is still at the top with 54.9%, Android has risen from 20.9% in August 2012, to 28.1% in August 2013.
We first heard that Samsung may be planning to announce its new “Galaxy Gear” smartwatch at its September 4 Galaxy Note III event earlier this month, but the rumor just got even stronger after it was confirmed by Bloomberg’s reliable sources.
They claim that the South Korean electronics giant will unveil a “wristwatch-like smartphone” powered by Android that will go head-to-head with the new Sony SmartWatch 2, and a potentially competing product from Apple, one of Samsung’s biggest rivals.
Almost half of the top 50 apps on iPad are unavailable or have not been optimized for competing devices that run Google’s Android operating system. That’s according to a new report from Canalys, which believes Google should be doing more to encourage top developers to build high-quality tablet apps for its platform.
Microsoft gave us a new anti-iPad ad yesterday, but there’s even more where that came from as the company released a new ad today that takes the iPad mini to task against the Acer Iconia W3.
The ad mostly focuses on the differences between iOS and Windows 8 and suggests that the iPad mini doesn’t have great games or productivity apps—which we all know is pretty much the exact opposite of reality.
Eventually the Siri-dubbed ad knocks on the iPad’s $429 price tag next to the $299 Iconia W3, even though Microsoft has conveniently forgotten that the W3 was originally priced at $380 before a series of price drops were introduced to try and get people to buy it.
Here’s the ad:
Microsoft’s recent barrage of anti–iPad ads have nearly all featured third-party tablets rather than boasting about Microsoft’s own iPad-killer, the Surface RT. Now that it’s desperately slashed prices on RT units, Microsoft is feeling inexplicably cocky in its latest ad, which pits the hardware and software specs of the iPad against that of the Surface RT.
Basically, Microsoft is praying the iPad’s lack of a keyboard (that you have to purchase separately), Microsoft Office, and a USB port will be enough to entice some unlucky nerds to buy a Surface RT instead of an iPad now that it’s cheaper than ever but still deprived of quality apps.
Here’s the ad:
We’re living in a post-PC age. You know it. I know it. Steve Jobs knew it when he coined the phrase three years ago at the original iPad launch event, and of course, it was the iPad that was in many ways the final nail in the coffin of decades of PC market growth.
Apple’s still the number one PC maker by unit sales, but even the growth of the Mac has been shrinking, while other PC Makers numbers are in freefall. Analysis firm Canalys, which does a lot of business analyzing PC sales, made a bizarre decision a while back to inflate their numbers by including tablets as PCs.
Even by that measure, though, Apple’s still the number one “PC” maker. But because Apple hasn’t released an iPad or iPad mini so far this year, they find that the “PC” Market was flat in Q2 2013.
For a long time after its launch, the iPad was by far the best-selling tablet on the market, and no matter how hard they tried, rival devices didn’t stand a chance of stealing its market share. But that’s all changed, according to the latest figures from IDC.
Android-powered slates saw a staggering 163% increase in the last year, and they’ve now overtaken the iPad and opened up a rather large gap in market share.
It’s no secret that Microsoft’s would-be iPad-killer has been a complete disappointment, but now Steve Ballmer, the company’s ever-optimistic CEO, is admitting to employees that the Surface is a flop.
Ballmer held a “rally the troops” event on the Microsoft campus yesterday to go over the company’s quarterly earnings and boost morale, but according to people at the event, Ballmer dove into how disappointing it has been trying to make Surface a success.
If you had to guess which of EA’s retail partners made it the most cash last quarter, you’d probably say Best Buy, GameStop, or another game store. But you’d be wrong. EA’s biggest partner last quarter was actually Apple, which helped it reach $90 million in sales on smartphones and tablets.
After refreshing its iPad lineup in the fall last year, rather than summer, Apple set itself up to go through a June quarter without a new iPad launch for the first time since it was introduced in 2010. Analysts are expecting Apple to announce that year-over-year iPad sales last quarter were down, but one thing that’s still up is iPad usage.
According to the latest stats from the Chitika ad network, iPads now account for 84.3% of all web traffic from tablets in June. That’s just a slight bump up from the 82.4% Apple hit in May, but it’s the iPad’s highest share of tablet web use this year.
Flipboard is no longer a service that you can only enjoy on mobile devices. From today, more than 2 million magazines on every topic imaginable are available to read in your web browser. Each one boasts Flipboard’s signature look and feel, but they’re been optimized for the larger screen on your desktop.
Remember when Microsoft unveiled the Surface RT last year and people said it totally makes the iPad and the MacBook Air obsolete? So far the Surface RT has been anything but an iPad-killer and according to Microsoft’s latest earnings, it’s losing them a shit ton of money too.
