Samsung: Facebook Has Huge Impact On Device Sales, Electronics Industry Growth (video)

March 23, 2011

At a press event today, Samsung Electronics gave a brief overview of some of the key technologies and driving forces that the Korean company is working on these days.

To kick off the lunch event, Vice President Jim Elliott described how mobile computing has reached a key inflection point within the electronics industry.

Mobile Computing to be 10X Desktop Computing

Mobile Computing to be 10X Desktop Computing

“We’re expecting more than 10 billion units of sales of these connected devices or mobile Internet devices over the next decade. This is an order of magnitude over the desktop Internet era which helped propelled the growth of the last decade,” said the Samsung executive.

These connected devices are GPSes, laptops, tablets, all integrated seamlessly to the cloud. “There is a tremendous amount of back-end infrastructure that is needed to drive all these connected devices seamlessly as people look more and more to the cloud to power this data transfert.”

Samsung sees Facebook driving the growth of the entire electronics industry

The Impact of Facebook on the Electronics Industry Keeps Growing

Interestingly, for Samsung, Facebook is now the new killer app that is driving the whole electronics industry. The social network is having a huge impact on connected device sales as more than 200 million people are accessing it a mobile device. And according to Facebook, people that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active than non-mobile users.

“In the past, a lot of times it was when a new operating system launched that really spurred PC sales, now it’s social networking and particularly Facebook is so impactful on people’s usage patterns and daily lives and this is having a huge impact on infrastructure and device sales,” adds Elliott.

For the Samsung executive, social networks are also the driver for Internet usage, even more popular than e-mail!

Web 3.0 traffic has a huge impact on Internet traffic load

“Think about the traffic, the load impact that this has on the Internet, on the backbone to move this around. According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index, about 31K petabytes per month needed to drive these pictures, videos… 1 petabyte is 13.3 years of HD video.”

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Samsung Electronics In “GREEN”novation Push

October 4, 2010

To end the slew of tech announcements coming out this week (read prior post), Samsung is hosting on Thursday, its second annual GREENovation event.

Company executives will discuss current green initiatives to bring more environmentally-friendly products to market and showcase Samsung’s latest green products.

At the event, Samsung executives will discuss about:

  1. green-focused product advancements,
  2. state-of-the-art green technology,
  3. green production enhancements; and,
  4. environmental recycling.

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LED Lighting’s Big Expansion

September 21, 2010

There is no shortage of emerging competition in LED lighting. Capacity is rising, prices are falling and some of the world’s biggest chipmakers appear ready to do battle.

This week LED kahuna Cree promised to spend $135 million expanding production at its North Carolina fab. It earmarked another $392 million for a new facility in the state and is said to be considering facilities in the low-cost labor markets of China and Malaysia.

Inside Bridgelux's new Silicon Valley fab

General Electric is ramping up its own production, as is Samsung, LG Electronics, Philips and Osram.  In China, about 55 producers are pumping money (some of its state funds) into their own plants.

Even India wants to get in on the act. De Core Science and Technologies is said to be gearing up for LED production at as many as two locations

Don’t forget Bridgelux, a promising U.S. producer that on Monday showed off a Silicon Valley fab where it has big plans for expansion. The company has the capacity to make 5,000 wafers a month and hopes to expand that five fold. About 180 new workers are expected by next year.

The growth should enable Bridgelux to more than double revenue next year from this year’s $30 million, says CEO Bill Watkins.

The industry’s expansion has an obvious motivation. Some estimates suggest a $19 billion worldwide market for LED lighting by 2014. There is big money to be made.

But with the steady expansion around the world, the danger of over capacity and commoditization rises as well.

Clean-room workers in the Bridgelux plant

The excitement of a massive LED market has attracted growing enthusiasm from venture capitalists. Money has poured into companies across the market spectrum, from software makers to hardware designers, including Luminus Devices, Superbulbs, Terralux, Digital Lumens, Albeo, LEDEngin. Bridgelux itself has raised $113.5 million.

There will be more to come.

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Nanosys Unveils $30M In Funding, Strikes Solar Deal With Samsung

August 10, 2010

Nanosys strengthened its competitive standing in the clean-tech market by securing as much as $30 million in new funding and striking a deal to have Samsung use its solar technology.

The Palo Alto start-up that became a poster child of the nanotech craze six years ago, has been steadily remaking itself into a supplier of technology to electronics and green-tech companies. The heady days are gone, as are the plans for a 2004 IPO.

But the company has built a respectable portfolio of technologies that boost the capacity of lithium ion batteries and improve the quality and efficiency of LED displays and solid-state lighting.

Now it has received validation of its solar technology in the form of a licensing agreement with Samsung. As part of the deal, Samsung Venture Investment Corp. will take a $15 million equity stake in Nanosys – on top of the millions more the company will pay for the license.

Previous Nanosys investors Arch Venture Partners, El Dorado Ventures, Polaris Venture Capital and Venrock will join the funding round, contributing $10 million. Nanosys expects to add another $5 million to the round by October.

CEO Jason Hartlove says the Samsung money will allow Nanosys to build a Silicon Valley plant and ramp production volumes.

But more importantly, Samsung will license Nanosys’ nano-particle coating technology and nano-inks to improve the efficiency and lower the cost of its thin-film solar cell production.

Samsung, a relatively latecomer to solar, announced earlier this week that it would more than quadruple solar cell production by the first half of next year. The company kicked off a 30 MW solar pilot last September and now has set its sights on 130 MW. It is reportedly working with both crystalline cells and thin film technologies.

Hartlove says his nano-particle coatings shift the infrared and ultraviolet wavelength light that thin film can’t process to colors the cells can absorb. Efficiency goes up. Meanwhile, nano-inks are quicker and cheaper alternatives to the chemical vapor deposition reactors that thin-film producers often use.

Samsung also will work with Nanosys on Nanosys’ quantum dot technology for LED chips.

“This is a very important deal for us,” says Hartlove.

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Intel’s New Shopping Craze: Wireless Technologies For Smartphones

August 5, 2010

Remember the late 90′s, when Intel was throwing billions in its quest to become a telecommunication powerhouse, to finally write it all off?

Well, sounds that the chipmaker is at it again with the recent acquisitions of Infineon’s cellular and GPS technology as well as the assets of small 4G vendor Comsys.

Hopefully, the mastermind of Intel’s first telecom foray, Sean Maloney, might remember one or two things learned from his first failed attempt to build a communications empire!

As analyst Linley Gwennap writes it,

“Making it clear that money is no object in its quest to become a major player in the smartphone market, Intel plans to acquire the wireless operations of Infineon in a deal valued at more than $1.2 billion. Infineon’s cellular and GPS technology will complement Intel’s Atom processor and Wi-Fi expertise, allowing Intel to deliver a complete solution for the rapidly growing smartphone and tablet-computer markets.”

Infineon ranked fourth in cellular-baseband shipments last year with 10.7% unit share, according to a recent report from The Linley Group. Infineon is a major supplier to Apple, Nokia, and Samsung.

But “the German vendor lacks an application processor, however, making success in the smartphone market difficult, and it has struggled to sell its 3G baseband outside of Apple,” adds Linley.

The analyst adds that in a quieter but significant move, Comsys acquisitions brings a processor for WiMax phones and was working on converting that design to support LTE.

Intel’s secret goal (well not anymore!) is to merge Infineon and Comsys technologies to create its own 4G solution coupled to its Atom chip for smartphones.

“Intel is clearly focused on smartphones, leaving the future of Infineon’s popular 2G processors in doubt. This deal could end up helping vendors such as Broadcom, MediaTek, and ST-Ericsson, which could step into the breach with their own 2G processors. Conversely, the deal gives Intel the technology it needs to develop an integrated 3G-smartphone processor, allowing it to compete against vendors such as Qualcomm and Marvell,” says Linley.

First published in TechPulse 360.

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Analyst: Apple Must Fix iPhone Faulty Antenna Design

July 21, 2010

In a report published today, MobileTrax principal analyst Gerry Purdy calls Apple to fix the iPhone 4 faulty antenna design.

Apple will need to fix the faulty design of the iPhone antenna. I can assure you that the iPhone 5 won’t have that problem. It might have another problem, but it won’t continue the antenna problems in the iPhone 4. I’m confident that Apple engineering will ensure the future iPhone (and iPad) products will have antennas that work properly.

Apple’s faulty design has consumers wonder if they should buy Apple’s smartphone or not

It has been a real nightmare for Apple, certainly a cause for consternation with millions of iPhone customers, and perhaps a “Wait a minute, should I buy one of these?’ hesitation for a number of prospective iPhone buyers.

And the real winner of Apple’s “Antennagate” ? Antenna engineers!

Simply holding a device should not interfere in any significant way with the network signal reception. And Antennagate will cause other firms such as HTC, Motorola, RIM and Samsung to increase antenna design capabilities to ensure that they won’t have a repeat of the same problem as Apple experienced. It should be a ‘field day’ for antenna design consultants to help all SmartPhone manufacturers fix antenna problems.

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Apple Claims #1 Mobile Spot, Ahead Of Sony, Samsung, Nokia

January 27, 2010

Apple's latest New York store, it's 4th, in the Upper West Side district

Before kicking off the “meat” of his keynote i.e. introducing Apple’s iPad tablet, CEO Steve Jobs started with an update on his company’s latest achievements.

  1. 250 million iPods sold since 2001;
  2. 284 retail stores;
  3. 50 million visitors went to Apple’s retail stores last quarter;
  4. Apple opened its 4th store in New York City;
  5. App store: 140,000 apps and 3 billion downloads in 18 months;
  6. Apple has a “run rate” of $50+ billion a year.

A last figure, that gives Steve Jobs the bragging right to claim the #1 spot as the world’s largest mobile devices company.

Selling more mobile devices – iPods, iPhones and Mac laptops – than Sony (camcorders, walkmans, cell phones…), Samsung and Nokia!

Later in his presentation, Jobs added the following numbers:

  1. 75 million iPod touches and iPhones sold so far. Meaning 75 million customers that already know how to use the iPad!
  2. The AppStore has 125 million active accounts with credit cards all ready for one-click purchases
  3. Finally, Apple sold 12 billion products through its AppStore and they’re ready to take orders from iPad customers buying music, videos, ebooks and more!

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California Energy Standards For TVs Will Spur Innovation

December 4, 2009

California’s energy standards for flat-panel televisions are the toughest in the world, requiring a 33 percent efficiency improvement by 2011 and a 50 percent gain by 2013.

Critics complain they will stifle innovation and raise prices for televisions affected – those 58 inches and smaller.

Ultra thin, energy efficient LED TVs might benefit from the California standards

But manufacturers such as Samsung disagree. About three quarters of the televisions on store shelves already meet the 2011 standards and about 25 percent pass the 2013 ones.

Samsung says it produces some of them. “We’re already there today,” says Scott Birnbaum, vice president in the company’s LCD business. “We’re not intimidated by these standards.”

An array of new technologies will help manufacturers keep pace with the market changes. The result is an acceleration in innovation, says Birnbaum.

For instance, Samsung is working to further reduce the power demands of LCD backlights with fewer bulbs, more transparent optical screens and transistors with wider apertures. It also is deploying technology to dim areas of the screen that don’t need the most intensive light – such as nighttime skies. Backlights can consume as much as 60 percent of a set’s electricity.

Yet the Golden State’s market is likely to see significant changes in the next several years. Plasma screens, which use more energy than LCDs, will probably see slowing sales. At the same time, more efficient LED will capture a greater share of the market, despite their higher price.

LEDs already are a fast growing segment, says Birnbaum. The bright pictures and micro-thin designs are a powerful draws.

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Samsung Recycling Program Turns To Post Office

August 26, 2009
Consumer electronics giant switches printer cartridge program from FedEx

Consumer electronics giant switches printer cartridge program from FedEx

Samsung had been working with FedEx.

Starting last week, it switched its allegiance. The consumer electronic giant said Tuesday that consumers are now able to recycle spent printer cartridges through the U.S. Postal Service.

The four-year old recycling program is free. Just print a postage label from the Samsung Website, enclose the old cartridge in the box the new one comes in and take it to a post office.

The aim is to keep cartridges out of landfills – and to create an environmentally sustainable business.

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Forward Insights Challenges IDC “Hockey-Stick” SSD Sales Forecast

August 13, 2009
IDC hockey-stick forecast will put Flash memory maker at a financial risk

If IDC's bearish forecast materialises, then more Flash memory makers will have to declare bankruptcy

For a change, research firms agreed to disagree in forecasting the emergence of the solid-state disk (SSD) drive market.

During a panel hosted today at the Flash Memory Summit conference in Santa Clara, Calif., small technical research firm Forward Insights blasted its larger competitors (including IDC and Gartner) for their hockey-stick-like projections of the SSD market.

But first, to set the stage, IDC research manager in hard-disk drive (HDD) components and solid-state disk (SSD) drives Jeff Janukowicz said he expects the SSD market to reach $3 billion in sales next year, compare to $733 million in 2008 and less than a billion dollar this year.

IDC’s forecast will lead Flash memory makers to bankruptcy

A bearish growth that for Janukowicz will be mostly driven by enterprises adopting SSDs to improve the performance and lower the consumption of their data centres and by early-adopters in the PC market like gamers in the desktop segment or executives’ laptops.

Here’s a video excerpt of Janukowicz remarks:

Great outlook, right?

Well, not really according to Forward Insights President Greg Wong who thinks that this kind of hyper growth can not be done in a profitable way.

“If you take a look at the industry right now, profitability is a big challenge for everybody. So where will they get the money to invest and expand at the big growth rate that you see here [pointing at competitors' forecasts]… wether its through technology migration, plus 3-bits per cell, plus 20% CAPEX. That’s what you need to achieve those rates that [competitors] are predicting for next year. If you believe that it’s feasible, then I guess you’ll have to use their projections… And even if demand is quite strong next year, where will they get the cash?,” explains Wong.

A more prudent sentiment that was echoed during the conference by Sandisk CEO Eli Harari and Samsung vice president of memory marketing Jim Elliot.

In this video excerpt Wong explains his opposing arguments to the explosive growth of the Flash memory market:

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