Samsung Wants the Upcoming Tizen OS on Every Product

Samsung has made clear that it has big hopes with its upcoming Tizen OS. In an interview with CNET, Samsung Mobile division head J. K. Shin said that smartphones aren’t its target with Tizen. After splashing in that industry, they would like to see it in further markets including cars as well, describing the idea as “cross category”.

“There are many convergences not only among IT gadgets, including smartphones, tablets, PCs, and cameras”, Shin said, “but also among different industries like cars, bio, or banks. Cross-convergence is the one [area] Samsung can do best since we do have various parts and finished products.”

Samsung actually isn’t the only company trying out its luck in cars as Apple has already made some great strides in that business lately.

With Tizen, Samsung will try to shrug off its reliance on Android operating system where it is the undisputed leader, but nonetheless dependent upon Google when it comes to development, among other things including leadership rights.

Tizen has got some nice reception already but might see itself at the back of the crowd in the beginning.

Shin strongly believes that Tizen has the potential to become the third operating system for the company alongside Android and Windows Phone. He also said that a lot of interesting development is currently going on in the tablet division right now.

“There will be good news on the tablet soon,” he said. “Please wait and see.”

Samsung has already killed its Bada operating system (which wasn’t totally unsuccessful after all and got better sales than Windows Phone for quite a time) to dedicate more effort into Tizen, so it’s only natural that the company is very excited with it.

Credits to CNET for this story.

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Samsung Releases the Galaxy NX for $2000

A while back, Samsung announced the world’s first mirrorless camera running on Android in the Galaxy NX but they declined to reveal its pricing. But it has been revealed now as the camera has gone on sale in Europe, for $2000 along with an 18-55mm kit lens.

That puts it in the territory of more “serious” DSLRs, a lot of whom are critically acclaimed including Canon EOS 70D, Nikon D600 and Sony Alpha SLT-A77V. Good thing is that none of those can run on Android, which is perhaps the only reason why you’ll buy this camera for such a huge price.

The Specs

The Samsung Galaxy NX comes with a 20.3 megapixel sensor, DRIMe Image Signal Processor and burst shots at up to 8.6fps. The maximum shutter speed it can attain is 1/6000 sec and it also has an electronic viewfinder at SVGA resolution. The NX also does 1080p video and features a Xenon Flash.

At the back you get a 4.8 inch HD touchscreen, where the OS running is Android 4.2.2 customized with Touchwiz. The power comes from a 1.6Ghz quad-core processor, 2 GB RAM and 16 GB storage, expandable via a microSD card.

The camera supports LTE, Wifi and Bluetooth. For editing, it comes pre-installed with several software tricks under its sleeve, including Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. The battery powering the camera is of 4360 mAh.

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Samsung and Apple Slide Down in Smartphone Marketshare, Lenovo Emerges

According to the new report by International Data Corporation (IDC), Samsung and Apple are currently the top manufacturers in the smartphone hierarchy right now, as before, but their lead has slid down notably in the last quarter.

Compared to same quarter of 2012, where both the manufacturers sold 32.2% and 16.6% of the smartphones worldwide, they topped out at only 30.4% and 13.1% this time around.

Sales increased though, obviously, topping out at 72.4 and 31.2 million units respectively, compared to 50.3 and 26 million of the year before.

HTC and Huawei dropped out from the top 5 manufacturers’ list altogether while Lenovo was a surprise entry in the list. The Chinese company sold 11.3 million units and attained a marketshare of 4.7%, unbelievably close to LG, which holds a marketshare of 5.1%.

Apple’s dropping sales were not unexpected, especially since a new leak of the so-called “budget iPhone” comes out almost everyday but in Samsung’s case, it does look awkward, curiously coming after the launch of the numerous versions of its Galaxy S4 flagship.

The overall smartphones sales were 237.9 million units. The case for Nokia shouldn’t be dissimilar from Apple, since this was the time period when it launched its Lumia 1020 flagship.

Top Five Smartphone Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share, 2013 Q2 (Units in Millions) 

Vendor	2Q13 Unit Shipments	2Q13 Market Share	2Q12 Unit Shipments	2Q12 Market Share	Year-over-year Change
Samsung	72.4	30.4%	50.3	32.2%	43.9%
Apple	31.2	13.1%	26.0	16.6%	20.0%
LG	12.1	5.1%	5.8	3.7%	108.6%
Lenovo	11.3	4.7%	4.9	3.1%	130.6%
ZTE	10.1	4.2%	6.4	4.1%	57.8%
Others	100.8	42.4%	62.8	40.2%	60.5%
Total	237.9	100.0%	156.2	100.0%	52.3%

Top Five Total (Feature+Smartphone) Mobile Phone Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share, 2013 Q2 (Units in Millions) 

Vendor	2Q13 Unit Shipments	2Q13 Market Share	2Q12 Unit Shipments	2Q12 Market Share	Year-over-year Change
Samsung	113.4	26.2%	97.5	23.9%	16.3%
Nokia	61.1	14.1%	83.7	20.5%	-27.0%
Apple	31.2	7.2%	26.0	6.4%	20.0%
LG	16.2	3.7%	13.1	3.2%	23.7%
ZTE	15.0	3.5%	15.2	3.7%	-1.1%
Others	195.2	45.2%	172.2	42.2%	13.4%
Total	432.1	100.0%	407.7	100.0%	6.0%

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