Samsung appears poised to deliver around 80 million OLED screens suitable for the "iPhone 8" before the end of 2017 — but a later than expected date for mass shipments for the phone is still expected.
Hot on the heels of the devastating recall that stopped sales of Galaxy Note 7, Samsung is now facing additional lawsuits that allege the company was aware of battery overheating and fire hazards for years—including its Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+, S6 Active, S7, S7 Edge, S7 Active and Note 5—but failed to address the issue or warn customers. Legal action has now spread to multiple class action cases in three different states.
Supply chain rumors from South Korea allege that Samsung has signed another deal for OLED screen production for future iPhones, with up to 180 million screens demanded by Apple.
Google has unveiled new versions of Android at its annual I/O developer convention with features often inspired by the previous year's iOS. The main difference: Apple can launch a new version of iOS and broadly distribute it before Google can deploy its copy of last year's iOS across even a third of its installed base. This problem is getting worse each year for Google and its Android partners.
Russia's smartphone shipments grew 6 percent in the first quarter of 2017, but premium smartphones (over $600) in the country grew by 143 percent over the previous year, and Apple captured 81 percent of those sales.
Samsung announced today that first-month sales of its Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus have reached 5 million units. Sales of the previous year's Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge sold an estimated 7-9 million units in their initial launch month, while back in 2013 Samsung announced its Galaxy S4 sold 10 million in its first month, a "Peak Galaxy" the company has never actually managed to surpass.
Samsung's plan to start selling a refurbished version of the ill-fated Note 7 smartphone is getting closer to completion, with the renamed 'Galaxy Note 7R' receiving approval from the Bluetooth SIG ahead of its expected rerelease in a limited number of markets, possibly within the next month.
Samsung is slowly catching up to its competition in the contactless mobile payments market in the United Kingdom, with the South Korean electronics giant launching Samsung Pay in the country on Tuesday, one year after Android Pay arrived in the UK, and almost two years after Apple Pay launched in the market.
Oh no! It seems Apple is "years behind" competitors in Virtual Reality, TV content subscriptions, self driving cars and home voice assistants. That's a clear sign the company may be studying the market like a cat about to pounce on its target, just as it did with iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and AirPods. There is a solid decade of evidence that, for Apple, being behind is a competitive advantage.
Responding to Qualcomm's recent bid to dismiss a U.S. Federal Trade Commission antitrust lawsuit concerning chip licensing practices, the governmental trade body in a court filing on Friday called the company a monopoly and said the case should proceed.
Possibly offering a peek into Apple's March-quarter results due to be revealed May 2, data released on Thursday estimated that Apple shipped some 51.6 million iPhones during the period, a slight improvement over 51.2 million a year prior.
It's hard to escape the media pronouncements that iPhones are now boring again after Samsung unveiled its latest Galaxy S8, Apple's Mac business is being overshadowed by more exciting Surface Windows PCs from Microsoft and that Apple Watch is a disappointing dud. But all of those media narratives are wrong, here's why.
Later this year, Apple is expected to begin production of its advanced new power-efficient display technology known as micro-LED, which is expected to initially be used to replace OLED in Apple Watch Series 3. The shift is part of a series of moves that is concerning Samsung, LG and other South Korean suppliers.
Another supply chain source suggests that the "iPhone 8" supply in 2017 will be profoundly hamstrung has emerged, but for a different reason — tight supplies of the the Samsung OLED screen.
Looking to recover from last year's exploding Note 7 fiasco, Samsung is expected to launch its first ever dual camera handset in the Note 8 later this year, according to a report from KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
Samsung is apparently confident that a rash of fires with its Note 7 phablet were caused by manufacturing errors, and not design or parts, as it has adopted many of the same features — and even one of the same battery manufacturers — with the new Galaxy S8+.
In response to an anonymous outside examination request made against the Apple document, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has actually revived parts of rejected U.S. Patent No. 7,844,915 — the so-called "pinch-to-zoom" filing — while leaving others intact.
A year ago Samsung touted waterproofing claims for the Galaxy S7 that didn't hold water. Six months ago, Samsung said its Galaxy Note 7 battery fires were under control before they flared up again. This season, Samsung's newest flagship also has features that simply don't work yet, including its Bixby voice service that was supposed to rival Apple's Siri.
Samsung became the global leader in smartphone marketshare during the March quarter, pushing Apple back into second place, according to production estimates published on Tuesday.
Samsung Electronics on Friday announced a forecast of its best profits in over three years for the March quarter, despite dealing with the fire-prone Galaxy Note 7, and a political scandal that resulted in the arrest of vice chairman Jay Y. Lee.
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Mike Wuerthele
Daniel Eran Dilger
Malcolm Owen
Mikey Campbell
Roger Fingas
AppleInsider Staff
