Samsung takes 35% of the Global Smartphone Market
According to Reuters, Samsung will take 35% year-on-year growth in smartphones this year. Samsung is expected to sell 290 million smartphones globally - last year it sold 215 million. With a broad range of handsets they have released and will be releasing this year, this number seems plausible.
Smartphone sales of Apple is expected to be 180 million in 2013. This is approximately 21% of the world share in this industry. However if the iPhone mini is released, it could compete with the Samsung portfolio. The rumors of the iPhone mini was sparked again recently in China and India.
It will be interesting to see how Samsung and Apple will do in terms of sales in key countries such as Korea, China, Western Europe, and of course North America. There are speculations that Samsung many dip because HTC and other Android manufacturers will step up their game this year, but Samsung has been steadily increasing the quality and sale of their mobile devices. We will be writing more on this, so watch this space.
LG to spend 2 trillion dollars on R&D
LG is to spend 20 trillion won (appx. 19 million US dollars) on R&D. They will mostly be focusing on OLED, Oxide TFT, LCD panels and LTPS.
The South Korean company aims to release a 60-inch transparent OLED panels by 2016, and will also be investing more in LG U+, LTE ad All-IP network services. They will also be developing mobile services, smart green solutions, and smart traffic just to name a few and will be investing in cloud services.
LG was recently involved in a dispute between LG U+ and KT (we will be writing more on this) so it'd be interesting to see how this plays out.
Eric Schmidt visits North Korea
The Google executive chairman, Eric Schmidt visited North Korea.
His reasons are not clear but there are speculations that he is considering a similar deal Google had with China - censorship in exchange for market access. There were also opinions that he was there to establish North Korean technology credentials. Whatever his reasons may be, we will be posting on any new updates.
