samsung

Does Apple's shadow still loom over CES?

At the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, one company always comes up during the cocktail conversations and hallway chats of the show. Its presence looms large and can be seen everywhere, even though it never attends CES.

That company is Apple, the undisputed juggernaut of the consumer electronics world and the planet's most valuable company (even with its recent stock slump).

Ever since Apple unveiled the iPhone, the rest of the consumer electronics world has been playing catchup. Samsung, Acer, Dell, Motorola, HTC, Nokia, Microsoft and others have been making up ground in the smartphone wars (… Read more

Samsung Series 7 Ultra: Souping up an ultrabook with touch and 1080p

The story of last year's CES was all ultrabooks; this year, the PC story is all about Windows 8 and touch. Samsung's latest laptop fuses both into a touch-screen computer that's hardly a surprise but meets what feels like a new expectation threshold in upper-tier Windows ultrabooks.

The 13.3-inch Series 7 is a new ultrabook for Samsung, as opposed to last year's top-end Series 9 and budget-targeted Series 5. The all-aluminum laptop is more "multimedia-targeted" than the Series 9 ever was, with a 1,920x1,080 resolution, discrete AMD HD8570M graphics, and JBL … Read more

Amazon Kindle Fire gains Web usage market share on iPad loss

Web usage of Apple's iPad fell more than 7 percent in North America after Christmas, while competing tablets from Amazon, Google, and Samsung all registered gains, according to a new study released today.

While the iPad dominates the market with 78.8 percent Web usage, its usage after Christmas dropped 7.14 percent, according to Chitika Insights, which sampled hundreds of millions of smartphone and tablet ad impressions in the U.S. and Canada between December 1 and December 27. The Kindle Fire -- the distant second-place player in the market -- gained 3 percent to account for 7.… Read more

TV in Ultra HD, new designs at CES 2013

Wednesday's CNET Update bends it like Samsung:

Today's roundup looks ahead to the International Consumer Electronics Show, which kicks off next week in Las Vegas. Many companies are already teasing to what will be unveiled:

- Samsung is touting a new TV design, which could be vertical.

- Ultra HD 4K TVs will be big, literally. Westinghouse will be showing its 110-inch 4K LED TV.

- Future LG televisions will no longer have florescent backlights, making LED the standard across all of the company's LCD TVs. LG will also showcase new smart TV features, including voice commands. … Read more

Samsung Evolution Kit makes smart TVs smarter

Last year Samsung promised that certain of its 2012 Smart TVs would get an upgrade called a "Smart Evolution Kit," and yesterday the company announced the upgrade would be available soon.

Buyers of the LED-based UN75ES9000, UNES8000, and UNES7500 LED TVs, as well as the PNE8000 and PNE7000 plasmas, will soon be able to buy the kit at a price between $200 and $300, Samsung told CNET. It installs by simply sliding into a slot on the back of the TVs.

The kit is basically a brain transplant for the TVs. It includes a new A15 quad-core 1.… Read more

Evidence in Apple v. Samsung tossed for breaking the rules

U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh is not big on rule breakers, and today slapped both Apple and Samsung over filing paperwork that did not follow her guidelines.

In an order this morning, Koh said that some or all of 10 pieces of evidence pertaining to Apple's bid for a sales ban against a number of Samsung devices would be stricken as evidence for excessive length, something that's been an issue during the spat between the two tech giants.

During the trial last August, Koh complained that both companies were filing too much paperwork, leaving her and … Read more

Judge decides to keep Samsung sales data unsealed

U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh has denied Samsung's request to keep its phone and device sales data out of the public's eye.

According to Bloomberg, which obtained a copy of an order filed earlier this week, Koh decided that Samsung must file and cannot seal an exhibit detailing total units sold on certain Samsung products. The products included in that exhibit, as well as the span of time in which the sales were registered, were not disclosed in Koh's order.

Koh has been at the epicenter of Apple and Samsung's vicious patent battle in … Read more

Apple to move A6X production from Samsung to TSMC -- report

Apple's A6X processor, which is found in the company's fourth-generation iPad, might soon see its producer switched from Samsung to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

Apple has agreed with TSMC to initiate trial production of its A6X processor during the first quarter, Taiwan-based Commercial Times is reporting, according to the AFP. The trial period could decide whether TSMC will be given the entire A6X order.

Samsung, Apple's arch-rival in the mobile market, is currently producing the company's A6X processor. However, with their legal and competitive struggles increasingly weighing on their business relationship, reports have suggested that Apple … Read more

Samsung teases robotic vacuum cleaner with a twist

Samsung revealed yesterday (albeit, with little detail) its latest robotic vacuum cleaner -- the Smart Tango Corner Clean -- just a week before a potential CES debut.

For those of you with visions of a Samsung-made Rosey the maid robot from "The Jetsons" zipping about your home, well, we're not quite there yet. However, due to the inclusion of appendages, the latest robotic vacuum from Samsung might give pause to prospective buyers of Roomba or Neato devices. … Read more

Samsung announces new SC770 multitouch monitor

Windows 8's new multitouch interface means the building of new multitouch monitors will be necessary to take advantage of it. The Series 7 Touch SC770 will be the first such monitor from Samsung.

The monitor supports up to 10 points of simultaneous multitouch. The monitor also offers 60 degrees of back-tilt flexibility; most monitors top out at about 25 degrees of tilt. Why Samsung didn't just go the full 90 degrees is beyond me, however.

Other features include a 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution, an MVA panel, Mobile High Definition Link, and an HDMI connection. Look for more information (… Read more