July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

In the first quarter of 2013, a third of smartphones sold in the U.S. were prepaid, double the amount from the previous year. Apple’s share of the prepaid market? A mere 8 percent.

People are just trying to get the best long-term deal, says Stephen Baker at the NPD Group:

“In a quarter without a major product launch from either of the two market leaders, consumers refocused their attention away from the postpaid wars and toward finding the best value for their dollar.”

Those two market leaders, of course, are Samsung and Apple. But Apple is hardly even a participant in the prepaid market.

The portion of the market sold prepaid has been increasing for years, says Baker.

“Sales of prepaid smartphones doubled from the previous year, continuing a string of more than 12 quarters of triple-digit sales increases.”

Apple’s share looks tiny, especially in a U.S. market where it has dominant market share, but it has quadrupled year-over-year since the first quarter of 2012. However, with the prepaid market growing so quickly, Apple’s latest –and typically expensive — phones have not been the big sellers. Rather, it’s the year-old iPhone 4S that is Apple’s leading contender in prepaid, just as one of Samsung’s top prepaid sellers is the now somewhat aged Galaxy S II.

Even outdated models get pricy — the iPhone 4S can cost $400 to $600 unlocked and brand-new, while the Galaxy S II can be between $300 and $400. But consumers make up the heavy upfront cost by saving on cheaper plans, potentially saving hundreds, if not a thousand dollars over the lifetime of their phones.

For Apple, however, capitalizing fully on this fast-emerging market trend means bringing out a cheaper iPhone that can be sold as a new, current model-year device at a price point closer to Android models from Samsung and LG. And Samsung has some work to do, too — while its market share remained stable from 2012 to 2013, competitors such as Apple and HTC have gained share.

Where are people buying prepaid phones? Mostly at retail, NPD says.

“Prepaid has proven to be a real winner for national retailers,” said Baker. “The easy purchase cycle and grab-and-go nature of the product play into the strength of large-format stores. Certainly, companies like AT&T recognize this shift in purchasing as they ramp up their focus on prepaid phones with their recently announced ‘Aio’ product branding initiative.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Sharp, Japan Display, and Samsung rival LG Electronics are tooling up for Apple iPhone 5S production runs that will begin in earnest in June, according to a report out of Japan.

Ramping up production in June and July will stock Apple’s shelves for a late summer or early fall launch, when Apple typically sells millions of devices in just a few days. That timetable is in line with Tim Cook’s statements during Apple’s last earnings call, in which Cook warned investors not to expect any major new product launches this summer:

“Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software, and services we can’t wait to introduce this fall and throughout 2014,” he said at the time.

Japan Display and LG have long made screens for Apple’s smartphones, while Sharp was added just late last year as Apple continues to diversify its list of manufacturers in an attempt to ensure adequate production capacity — and to limit reliance on any one particular partner.

The most critical point in the report?

The liquid crystal panel of the next model “iPhone (iPhone) 5″ Apple, specification is close to the current and the “iPhone 5.”

In other words, the 5S is the same size and shape as the 5, which means that this particular product is not the iPhone Mini or iPhone Maxi that have recently been rumored. Which doesn’t, of course, mean that Apple is not sourcing components for those potential products from other manufacturers.

According to the report, the factory Sharp will be using has a production capacity of 600 million units a month. Apple will not even need even a reasonable fraction of that, and the factory has been chronically underutilized.

This is good news for Sharp, Japan Display, and Japan in general. Electronics manufacturers in Japan have seen Korean companies like Samsung take their lunch and eat it, too, and have had to cut staff, offload underperforming business units, and cut back expenses.

It’s also good news for Apple fans who are looking forward to some juicy new iTech.

Image credit: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

After all the money we spent buying flat screen TVs in the past decade, LG is reintroducing the curved TV. This curve, however, is focused on you.

Today, LG announced that it is accepting pre-orders for the first curved OLED TVs ever to ship. The LG 55EA9800 is a 55-inch organic-light-emitting-diode TV with a concave curve, not convex like the old tube TVs. In other words, it curves gently towards you, not away from you.

The result, LG says, is spectacular.

“The entire screen surface is equidistant from the viewer’s eyes, eliminating the problem of screen-edge visual distortion and loss of detail,” LG said in a press release.

The curved screen, which is only .17 inches thick and weighs just 37 pounds, took five years of research and development to create, LG says. And the technology gives it a leg up on competitors, according to LG CEO Havis Kwon, who said the curvy television is “proof of LG’s unmatched leadership” and an example of the “most exciting TV technology available today.”

Kwon’s comments are apparently a challenge to Samsung, which also announced a curved OLED TV in January.

In addition to LG’s WRGB technology for delivering color with a white “sub-pixel” in addition to the typical red, blue, and green pixels in standard TVs, the other gloat-worthy feature of the 55EA9800 is the invisible speakers.

The TV’s audio output is in its transparent stand, where LG uses transparent thin-film speakers to deliver what it calls “high-quality” sound. That helped it win a design competition earlier this year, although I’m doubtful it will make for the best sound available.

The new curved TV might make for a great personal TV-viewing experience, but it looks like LG is also building in technology to let users daisy-chain them together for a larger, even more immersive experience, which would be useful for large public places and venues.

One caveat on the curves: I wonder how well they will work for a large viewing audience, like a Super Bowl party. My assumption would be that the curve would negatively impact some of the viewers’ experience, particularly those at the edges of the room.

Pricing has not been released, but some sources have placed it at $13,500.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

This Apple’s still got some bite.

After weeks and months of good news for Android, ComScore’s U.S. subscriber market share report released today says that Apple is actually growing overall iPhone sales and iOS platform penetration, while Google’s Android is dropping.

In terms of the installed base of devices, Apple owned 38.9 percent of the market as of February 2013, leading second-place Samsung by almost 18 percentage points. Apple’s market share is up 11 percent from the previous quarter, which ended in November 2012. Since Apple’s iPhone is synonymous with Apple’s mobile operating system — it’s not available on any other device — iOS also grew 11 percent in the quarter.

Source: ComScore

Top smartphone OEMs February 2013

Meanwhile, Google’s Android actually dropped overall market share.

While at the end of November 2012 Android owned 53.7 percent of the market, at the end of February 2013 that had dropped to 51.7 percent — losing two percentage points for an almost 4 percent reduction. That’s astonishing for a platform that has had so much momentum and so many manufacturing partners.

Source: ComScore

Top smartphone platforms – February 2013

Samsung did pick up market share, adding a percentage point for five percent growth in the quarter, while HTC dropped further still, as did Google-owned Motorola, and LG.

The numbers contrast quite starkly with numbers that Kantar Worldpanel released just three days ago, which showed iPhone sales down, Android up slightly, and Windows Phone growing rapidly. Those are sales numbers, so you expect some discrepancies with installed base numbers. The question is how ComScore shows an overall increase in iOS marketshare while Kantar says there’s been a drop in iPhone sales.

I’m checking with both companies for updates, but one potential reason is that ComScore numbers only apply to consumers age 13 and up, which could skew the numbers Apple’s way. But essentially, if ComScore’s numbers can be trusted, this means that Apple had a stellar Christmas quarter — which we already knew from its massive $54.5 billion first quarter earnings.

The question in analysts’ minds is whether Apple can keep this up … and whether it can replicate this kind of success in Europe as well as in emerging markets in Asia.

Judging from Apple’s stock market woes, the answer so far is no.

photo credit: Marco aka MenfiS via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Few things show the turning of the technological tide more than Gartner’s global semiconductor report, released today. Together, mobile device giants Samsung and Apple bought 15.2 percent of CPUs and other chips sold in 2012.

Both grew spectacularly, with Samsung up 28.9 percent, and Apple up 13.6 percent, while HP and Dell dropped 12.7 and 13.4 percent, respectively. Samsung’s purchases topped out at $23.9 billion, and Apple bought $21.4 billion worth of chips for phones, tablets, and other devices.

“Although Samsung and Apple continue to go from strength to strength, other leading electronic equipment makers fared less well,” Gartner research analyst Masatsune Yamaji said in a statement, adding that six of the previous top 10 reduced their demand in 2012. That top 10, who together consume $106.4 billion of the total $297.6 billion semiconductor market, includes Toshiba, LG, Cisco, and Nokia.

Speaking of which, Nokia was spectacular as well — if you count flameouts. The fading Finnish phone company dropped its purchase of semiconductors by a staggering 42.6 percent, representing $3.6 billion in chips. Overall, the market was down 3 percent, Gartner said.

But not only is the guard changing, the product mix is changing.

“The PC market still represented the largest sector for chip demand, but desktop and mobile PCs did not sell well, as consumers’ interest shifted to new mobile computing devices like smartphones and media tablets,” Yamaji added.

That has implications for overall profitability, as chips that go in phone and tablets cost lest than the latest and greatest chips for desktops and laptops.

Source: Gartner

Top 10 semiconductor buyers

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Drool now or drool later, but LG just announced more details about its 2013 TV lineup, which it will unveil at CES in a week.

For 2013 the Korean company is focusing on smart TV enhancements like Smart Home, melding TV and web with quick access to apps, content, news sites, and weather; and Magic Remote, which enables you to control your TV by pointing, Nintendo Wii-style, or scrolling, or gesturing, or simply talking to your TV to change the channel or search for programming.

LG is also enhancing what it calls Smart Sharing, which enables owners to transfer, mirror, or share content to and from smartphones, tablets, and other devices; and LG Cloud, which enables streaming content from just about anywhere.

All of which is interesting. But the real lust-worthy item on display is its 84-inch Ultra HD television, which just launched in late October.

This TV isn’t just room-dwarfingly gargantuan — it’s also got four times the resolution of standard high-definition TVs, with 3,840 horizontal pixels combining with 2,160 vertical pixels to provide a very sweet 8,294,400 pixels of silky-smooth video pleasure. That’s 3.1 million pixels more than in an Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display (although, of course, on a much bigger screen).

But get ready to hit up the boss for a raise — that 84-inch Ultra HD TV will set you back a budget-busting $20,000.

To drive all this wealth of pixels and new intelligence, LG is updating the brains of their TVs, boosting CPU speeds by 120 percent and GPUs by 300 percent, which it says will translate to clearer images.

You’ll need that extra power, since the new Ultra HD resolution is completely unsupported by any content recorded at such high quality, so the TV depends on upconverting to provide a semblance of what higher high-def would look like.

A couple other welcome notes: LG’s new “Cinema Screen” design ethos means smaller bezels, providing more TV with less frame, and a better 3D experience with less flicker.

We’ll have more on all the latest CES announcement as the VentureBeat team CES team hits the road for Las Vegas shortly.

Panasonic, which had already trimmed its workforce by 36,000 jobs last year, will be looking to sell or close any business units that cannot achieve at least a 5 percent project margin, the company’s chief financial officer told Reuters.

Japanese electronics companies are fighting surging Korean electronics companies such as LG and Samsung — and losing. Sony’s stock is down almost 80 percent in the past five years. Sharp is down 90 percent, and Panasonic itself is down about 75 percent and currently at a 10-year low. LG stock, on the other hand, is up about 30 percent since mid-year, and Samsung’s stock has almost tripled since early 2011.

Source: Google Finance

Sony, Panasonic, and Sharp stock prices: down, down, down.

The Korean manufacturers have taken the majority of Panasonic and other Japanese companies’ TV business and have been quicker to jump on profitable new segments such as smartphones, where Samsung has a global lead.

Panasonic’s last profitable year was 2010, but it is aiming to return to profitability in its March 2013 to March 2014 fiscal year, aided by the sale of $1.4 billion-worth of land and buildings in Japan.

But it has a tough job ahead, with 88 business units to review and fix, close, or sell.

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Lucky drop tests aside, Apple’s iPhone may be the smartphone most prone to damage.

More than three-quarters of discarded iPhones are broken in some fashion, making Apple the brand with the most broken devices, according to ecoATM data supplied to VentureBeat.

EcoATM is the San Diego-based startup that collects recycled electronics at kiosks and doles out cash for goods, even devices rendered useless with screen, case, or electrical damage. A company spokesperson said that ecoATM maintains the best data on broken devices.

The company said that 76 percent of all the Apple phones it’s ever collected – in this case, the iPhone 3, iPhone 3G, iPhone 4, and iPhone 4S models — displayed physical or electrical damage. For comparison, 69 precent of HTC smartphones, 57 percent of BlackBerries, 53 percent of Samsung and Motorola devices, and 44 percent of LG ecoATM-collected phones were broken in some fashion.

The startup also looked at a specific sample of 20,283 broken smartphones, which included more than a dozen models (*raw data is included below). In the broken phone sample, roughly 37 percent, or 7,477 devices, were Apple products. BlackBerry trailed closely behind with 35 percent, or 7,033, of the broken phones. In this sample, Motorola and Samsung smartphones represented 12 percent and 8.6 percent of the broken devices, respectively.

The data does not conclusively find that Apple’s iPhone is easiest to break or broken more often than other devices, but the findings will come as no surprise to iPhone owners all too familiar with the cracked screens and shattered glass backs on iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S phones.

Of course, the jury’s still out as to the durability of the iPhone 5, though the device did pass a somewhat skewed drop test with impressive results.

*Raw data from sample of 20,283 broken phones:

Photo credit: Clifford Joseph Kozak/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Samsung owns 99 percent of the world’s OLED market. This is one reason why, the company claims, Korean rival LG has been hiring its engineers and stealing its intellectual property.

So Samsung is suing LG in a Seoul court.

It might appear to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black, considering Samsung’s recent loss in the iPhone patent case. However, this is a very different scenario.

According to the complaint, LG has been systematically recruiting key Samsung engineers, who are breaking noncompete employment contracts by signing on. As a Korean news agency states, Samsung claims that ”LG Display has consistently acquired our OLED technologies and other business secrets by inducing our researchers to transfer.”

Eleven people were indicted for stealing or improperly sharing Samsung’s corporate secrets in July, including a key engineer in Samsung’s development of AMOLED technology (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode).

With sales of OLED and AMOLED displays predicted to hit $44 billion in 2016, the battle is really about the future and who will own the bulk of that market. If Samsung can maintain its technology lead, it can effectively shut competitors — including LG — out of that business.

Samsung is demanding a billion won for each case of infringement, which is equivalent to about $900,000 U.S.

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One of the employees, according to Korea Times, was a key engineer in Samsung’s development of AMOLED technology (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode). He has since become an LG employee, violating (Samsung claims) the non-compete clause in his employment contract.

AMOLED technology, or an even more advanced variant known as Super-AMOLED, is used in Samsung’s smartphones such as the Galaxy S series, helping the company to sell more than 50 million smartphones in the second quarter of 2012.

Samsung has demanded an apology from LG and asked a Korean judge to impose a 10 million won/day penalty (about $10,000 USD.) In addition, Samsung wants assurances from LG that the company will not poach its workers in the future.

According to Bloomberg, LG says that any intelligence gained from former Samsung engineers was “widely known in the industry” and not a trade secret.

LG is countersuing, alleging defamation.