Amazon Re-designing It's Website To Suit Tablet PC

The famous portal amazaon.com is carrying out major changes in the design of its website.

The new design incorporates less of clutter; the aim is to make music, e-books, games, and applications from Amazon's Appstore show up prominently. At the same time, the Search bar is larger.

The new design is said to be particularly suitable for tablet PC's. And Amazon is known to be ready to offer a tablet PC similar to Apple iPad and perhaps position it as a competitor to iPad. It is expected to cost some $250.

The tablet PC to be offered by Amazon is said to be smaller than an i-Pad but just about the same size as that of the PlayBook from RIM. It sports a 17.8 cm backlit colour touchscreen and has 6 GB of RAM. screen and is said to be particularly convenient for playing music and movies online. Amazon Prime, the Internet Streaming Service which costs $79 p.a. is expected to be offered free with Amazon's tablet PC. It supports Wi-Fi alone.

The Amazon tablet is expected to sell about 5 million units in a quarter - compared to the current 7 to 9 million units of iPad per quarter - and is expected to eat substantially into Apple's market which is already under threat from other manufacturers like Samsung, Motorola, and RIM.





 

Samsung Defers Launch of Galaxy Tablet PC in Australia

The patent battle between Apple and Samsung continues unabated.

Samsung has announced that the launch of its Galaxy Table PC in Australia has been postponed pending judgement in the last week of September in the patent suit between Samsung and Apple. According to Apple, the Galaxy range has copied the design of iPhone.

The deferred launch is yet another setback to Samsung which has been aiming to dominate the market for Tablet PC's.

Last week, Apple was granted an injunction by a Dutch Court against Samsung. A German Court granted an injucntion against the sale of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 Tablet PC; the injunction stays in effect till a ruling in the matter expected to be delivered on 9th September. Apple had sought a ban on three models of smartphones released in Europe.

Apple, which has captured a lion's share of the market for high-end smartphones with its legendary iPhone, claimed violation of its patent rights by Samsung; Samsung has counter-claimed that Apple has violated the patent rights of Samsung in respect of wireless transmission. There are continuing patent suits between Apple and Samsung in Australia, Europe, South Korea, and US.

A press statement issued by Samsung said: "Today, Samsung informed the Federal Court of Australia it intends to file a cross claim against Apple Australia and Apple Inc regarding the invalidity of the patents previously asserted by Apple and also a cross claim against Apple regarding violation of patents held by Samsung by selling its iPhones and iPads."

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Ban Lifted

A court in Germany has temporarily lifted ban on sale of Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Europe. This is a huge setback for Apple’s claim that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 copies elements from the Apple iPad.

Few weeks back Apple sued Samsung over intellectual property copying and last week the Regional Court of Dusseldorf issued an injunction on Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 sale. The injunction covered all of the European Union except the Netherlands where Apple has a separate lawsuit underway. Also recently Apple filed a complaint with the Federal Court of Australia to ban Galaxy Tab 10.1’s release in Australia.

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the latest tablet from Samsung. The original version of the Galaxy Tab was a 7-inch tablet but this year’s model adopts a similar screen size to the iPad and is marginally thinner than the iPad 2. Apple accused that “it's no coincidence that Samsung's latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging. This kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to protect Apple's intellectual property when companies steal our ideas."

Samsung issued a statement saying, “"We will take all necessary measures to ensure Samsung's innovative mobile communications devices are available to customers in Europe and around the world.”

The court is due to hear Samsung’s appeal against the injunction next week.

Google Is Buying Motorola Mobility

In its biggest deal till date Google is all set to buy Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc for $12.5 billion to boost their Android mobile software and compete with other smartphone rivals like Apple, Samsung etc. 

Google, the maker of the Android mobile phone is desperate to buy Motorola Mobility after losing out on Nortel's patents.

Recently in his blog Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond accused rival Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and other companies for hamper their chance to get the increasingly popular Android software by buying up patents.

Google, is expected to complete the take over the Motorola Mobility by end of 2011 or early in 2012.

Samsung Xcover to Fight with Sony Ericsson Xperia Active For Indestructible Smartphone Crown

After Motorola Defy, two new smartphones from Samsung and Sony Ericsson are about to come to market, seeking to take-over the unbreakable device market.

Samsung announced the Xcover smartphone, the most robust smartphone to date based on Android Operating System.

 

The Xcover is a 3.65 inch waterproof touchscreen, runs using Android 2.3 Gingerbread with 800MHz processor, 150MB of memory, and 2GB storage.

Simon Stanford, MD of Samsung promised that the device will be made "with a strong, airtight chassis," and that this "makes this smartphone resistant to dust and water damage without compromising on the design." The new smartphone is yet to receive a price or release date.

Samsung To Announce New Product On 29th August

Samsung Mobile is arranging an event on 29 th August in New York to announce its new product. The invitation has reached to all sections of media but Samsung did not yet revealed the product details which will be launched.

But the speculation is that may be the launch is the new version of Galaxy S II as the invite image has Galaxy S II in the name and then there is the large “II” in the image.

We will keep you posted that actual launch of its product and as we are expecting Samsung may launch phone on multiple carriers simultaneously.

HTC Offers Talk with Apple Prior To ITC’s Final Rulings

The latest news in the Apple-HTC saga is that HTC is willing to negotiate with Apple before both companies get penalized against each other by International Trade Commission (ITC)of US. 

ITC found that both HTC and Apple has violated rules and in an unprecedented ruling ITC may go ahead with banning products of Apple as well as HTC in the US market. ITC ruled that HTC had violated two Apple patents on “system and method for performing an action on a structure in a computer" and a "real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data”, while Apple violated two HTC patents on “fixed-rate block-based image compression with inferred pixel values.”

Indicating a possible deal between Apple and HTC before such verdict, HTC spokesperson Winston Yung told to media, “We are open to all sorts of solutions, as long as the solution and the terms are fair and reasonable.”  “On and off we’ve had discussions with Apple, even before the initial determination came out,” he said.

Already Apple is fighting a very nasty legal battle with Samsung for copyright issue where Apple has accused Samsung of copying its entire style and Samsung is accusing Apple of infringing in its telecommunication technology patents.

Samsung Aims to Sell 300 Million Phone in 2011

President of Samsung's mobile communications and digital imaging, Shin Jong-kyun has revealed their big plans for 2011 in an interview with the South Korean Yonhap news agency. The company is expected to sold 300 million phones including 60 million smartphones shipments. Last year Sumsung sold 280 million phones including - 25 million smartphones.

Sumsung expected growth on banking the success of the Galaxy S II smartphone, which is doing very well in everywhere including Korea, US, China,  Japan, UK, and Europe.

Now Samsung is in the business with Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 and is rumoured to be working on a WP7 version of the Galaxy S II. Buzz is that Samsung will release yet another Galaxy device, Galaxy Q at this year's IFA expo at Berlin on September. This new Galaxy Q is may have a whopping 5.3-inch display and possibly LTE connectivity.  No other details have revealed yet.

Apple Sues Samsung for Patent Infringement

Apple and Samsung are still at it. We mean they are still busy suing each other.

This time over, Apple has sued Samsung in South Korea alleging infringement of its patents by Samsung.

Ealier this year, Samsung filed a slew of patent suits against Apple in Germany, Japan, and South Korea; more have been expected from Samsung and retaliatory litigation from Apple has been just as anticipated.

There have been reports of talks between the two behemoths to arrive at some conciliation but it looks as though the talks, if any, have borne no fruit yet.

Samsung Corby II Makes a Silent Debut in Europe

Samsung released its S3850 Corby II feature phone this week in Europe without any fanfare. The phone is a sequel to Samsung Corby which has been enormously successful and incorporates some minor improvements over  it.

While the phone further narrows the gap between featurephones and smartphones, it still remains a budget phone with no higher end features. 

The Corby II is a touchscreen barphone supporting GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 networks but it does not support 3G.

The Samsung Corby II measures 109.9 x 66.6 x 11.7 mm and weighs 102g. The screen is 3.2" capacitive TFT (making the screen larger than that of Corby) with QVGA resolution (240 x 320 pixels).

CorbyII.jpg

There is 26MB of internal storage and a microSD card slot. It has a fixed-focus 2MP camera which is not much going by the current crop of phones. Corby II supports QVGA video recording @15 fps.

It supports Push Email. It has social networking integration with live updates.

The phone supports WLAN (Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth 3.0  with A2DP, standard microUSB v2.0,and 3.5mm audio jack. The Corby II has FM radio with RDS.

The brilliant colours it comes in make the Samsung S3850 Corby II more attractive to the youth - girls, in particular.

Samsung Sues Apple in Turn

In sharp retaliation to Apple's lawsuit against Samsung citing patent infringements, Samsung has filed 10 patent infringement claims over the Apple products in three different countries. And it’s said to be just the beginning.

According to Samsung, Apple has infringed five of its patents in South Korea, two in Japan and three in Germany. The cases are most probably about wireless patents.

More patent claims against Apple are possibly in the pipeline. The outcome is quite unclear as legal battles most often are. But it does not look quite pragmatic on the part of Apple to have picked up a fight with one of its biggest suppliers of phone parts. The battle of the Titans is expected to be fairly protracted before the issues are settled.

Samsung's Mobile Market Predictions

In 2010, Samsung with 280 million handsets sold worldwide as against a total of 1.3 billion across all brands put together was the second largest player in the Mobile Phone market - after Nokia with 410 million sets worldwide.

Statistics shows 130 million handsets were sold in the Indian market so far and Samsung was the second largest player in the Indian market as well with a 22% market share. The Indian market is currently the third largest market for Samsung - after U.S. and China - and accounts for 10% of its sales. Samsung's Hyunchul Ryu (Vice-president, Sales & Marketing, Mobile Communication Business, South West Asia) expects India to be their largest market for mobile phones.

Samsung plans to invest substantially in India, during the next four years, for R&D, marketing, portfolio and people - apart from its tentative plans to scale up the production in Noida while paying sustained attention to introducing more products that are specific to the domestic market.

Samsung has handsets spread over a vast price range (as little as Rs.1,100 to as high as Rs.35,000) and as many as 50 models in the market at any given time catering to a wide range of customer requirements. The price range and the product range together mean that even the low-end market is not being ceded by Samsung in their fierce quest to retain  the stunning lead of 400% over the No.3 player in the Indian market and narrow the lead of the No.1 player. Given their manufacturing facility at Noida where 1 million handsets are produced every month and their 3000-employee strong R&D facility in Bangalore, Samsung expects to create products targeted at the domestic Indian market and thus handle competition - big and small as well - effectively.

Though Samsung is not expecting substantial revenues as of now from the services market, it is not overlooking the services market. The Java Application Store in India, the first of kits kind in the world, is, with 5 million downloads, among Samsung's top markets in terms of downloads. Their tie-up with Hungama has made over 150,000 songs accessible to domestic customers.

If the last few years of relentless effort and results are any indication, the optimism of Samsung that India would emerge as its largest market by 2015 seems to be perfectly well-founded.