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Samsung Pays $1B to Apple with 30 Truck Loads of 5 Cent Coins

Saturday, September 01, 2012 at 8:54 PM Article by Unknown 0 Comments


A funny story is sweeping the internet. Samsung paid $1.05 billion to Apple by sending 30 trucks containing five-cent coins.
According to PaperBlog, the trucks were sent to Apple's main office in California. Initially, the security of the company prevented the intrusion. However, Apple CEO Tim Cook received a call from the chief executive of Samsung that they have sent the payment for the fine ruled by the jury in the recently concluded patent battle of the two tech giants.





This may present an idea to Samsung since the jury did not specify a single payment method, so Samsung is entitled to send him to the creators of the iPhone its billion dollars as they deem best.
Apple was awarded over $1 billion in damages after a US jury decided that Samsung had copied critical features of the iPhone and iPad. This verdict could lead to an outright ban on sales of key Samsung products. 

Following their win on the controversial patent trial, tech giant Apple is seeking bans on eight smartphones from Samsung. Apple wasted no time in their attempt to hinder the sales of the eight older model phones of its rival including the Galaxy S II and Droid Charge.
While Apple's lawsuit cited 28 devices, many of those accused products are no longer widely available in the world's largest mobile market.
Although Samsung's flagship Galaxy S III phone was not included in the trial, the jury validated Apple's patents on features and design elements that the United States company could then try to wield against that device.
Winning the court battle only strengthens its position in the market before the much anticipated release of iPhone 5 on September 12. Moreover, this could yield to its dominance in the tech market.

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All About Higgs Boson

Sunday, July 29, 2012 at 9:18 PM Article by Unknown 1 Comment



Scientists working at the world's biggest atom smasher near Geneva have announced the discovery of a new subatomic particle that looks remarkably like the long-sought Higgs boson. Sometimes called the "God particle" because its existence is fundamental to the creation of the universe, the hunt for the Higgs involved thousands of scientists from all over the world.

Here are five things to note about today's discovery:


  1. WHAT IS THE GOD PARTICLE ANYWAY?
    School physics teaches that everything is made up of atoms, and inside atoms are electrons, protons and neutrons. They, in turn, are made of quarks and other subatomic particles. Scientists have long puzzled over how these minute building blocks of the universe acquire mass. Without mass, particles wouldn't hold together and there would be no matter. One theory proposed by British physicist Peter Higgs and teams in Belgium and the United States in the 1960s is that a new particle must be creating a "sticky" field that acts as a drag on other particles. The atom-smashing experiments at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, have now captured a glimpse of what appears to be just such a Higgs-like particle.
  2. WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
    The Higgs is part of many theoretical equations underpinning scientists' understanding of how the world came into being. If it doesn't exist, then those theories would need to be fundamentally overhauled. The fact that it apparently does exist means scientists have been on the right track with their theories. But there's a twist: the measurements seem to diverge slightly from what would be expected under the so-called Standard Model of particle physics. This is exciting for scientists because it opens the possibility to potential new discoveries including a theory known as "super-symmetry" where particles don't just come in pairs - think matter and anti-matter - but quadruplets, all with slightly different characteristics.
  3. HOW MUCH DID IT COST?
    CERN's atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, alone cost some $10 billion to build and run. This includes the salaries of thousands of scientists and support staff around the world who collaborated on the two experiments that independently pursued the Higgs.
  4. WERE THERE ANY PRACTICAL RESULTS FROM THE SEARCH?
    Not directly. But the massive scientific effort that led up to the discovery has paid off in other ways, one of which was the creation of the World Wide Web. CERN scientists developed it to make it easier to exchange information among each other. The vast computing power needed to crunch all of the data produced by the atom smasher has also boosted the development of distributed - or cloud - computing, which is now making its way into mainstream services. Advances in solar energy capture, medical imaging and proton therapy - used in the fight against cancer - have also resulted from the work of particle physicists at CERN and elsewhere.
  5. WHAT'S NEXT?
    "This is just the beginning," says James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN. Scientists will keep probing the new particle until they fully understand how it works. In doing so they hope to understand the 96 percent of the universe that remains hidden from view. This may result in the discovery of new particles and even hitherto unknown forces of nature.



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Samsung Tops Apple to Become The World’s Top Smartphone Vendor

Friday, October 28, 2011 at 10:35 PM Article by Unknown 1 Comment


A few weeks back we reported that Apple has overtook Nokia in a race to become the world’s top smartphone manufacturer. Well, Apple’s reign at the top didn’t last long as according to a report published today, Samsung is now the world’s largest smartphone vendor(in terms of shipments — not the sales).


apple vs samsung Samsung Tops Apple to Become The Worlds Top Smartphone Vendor


In Q3 2011, Apple Inc. managed to ship only 17.1 million smartphones, comprising 14.6% of the market, whereas Samsung shipped a staggering 27.8 million smartphones which is around 23.8% of the market — pushing the California based company to the second spot. Nokia in the meantime remained in third place behind Samsung and Apple.


Samsung Electronics Co. shipped more than 20 million smartphones in the quarter ended Sept. 30, a person familiar with the situation said Thursday, beating market leader Apple Inc. as well as Nokia Corp., the world’s biggest cellphone maker by volume.
The South Korean company benefited from a push into the high end; demand is robust for phones that consumers can use to watch videos, download movies and send email. The company is also taking advantage of the popularity of Google Inc.’s Android operating system, while also stepping up production in Europe of phones using its own software and software from Microsoft Corp.

The next target for Samsung is to surpass Apple in terms of sales, would they be able to achieve this? It seems very realistic to us.

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Google Buys Motorola Mobility for US$12.5 Billion

Monday, August 15, 2011 at 11:29 PM Article by Unknown 1 Comment


Google has entered into an agreement to acquire the mobile phone maker Motorola Mobility for about US$12.5 billion, the company said on Monday.
Google has offered about $40 per share in cash, a premium of 63 percent over the closing price of Motorola Mobility shares on Friday.

google motorola mobility acqusition


Motorola Mobility exclusively ships phones and its Xoom tablet with Google's Android operating system. The deal will mean that Google now has a hardware manufacturer to work with closely to develop Android, said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner.
Google will also have control of Motorola's impressive patent portfolio, Milanesi said. Motorola Mobility said earlier this year that it owns about 24,500 patents.

Conflict with Partners?

But the deal may also create tension with other mobile phone manufacturers such as HTC and Samsung, which also ship Android devices, she said. Since creating Android, Google has rotated manufacturers with which to release new Android code, releasing the code to others about six months later.

Google may risk alienating those other manufacturers, but Milanesi said "all these vendors have invested so much in the platform, they won't quickly walk away from it."

Google may also want to speed up the development of its Android operating system on tablet computers, where it has been slower to catch on than on mobile phones, Milanesi said. The next release for Android, code-named "Ice Cream Sandwich," will be an operating system designed for tablets and mobile devices.

The acquisition of Motorola Mobility will enable Google to "supercharge the Android ecosystem and enhance competition in mobile computing," according to a news release. Google said the deal will not affect how Android is developed, and the operating system will remain open, Google said.

The company will run Motorola Mobility, which has about 20,000 employees, as a separate business, Google said. The transaction is expected to close at the end of this year or early next year.

Motorola Mobility, which was spun off from its parent company in early January, is composed of two groups: Mobile Devices, which makes phones, and Home, which makes set-top boxes and other IPTV equipment.


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Google Just Started A Price War With Facebook With Google+ Games

Saturday, August 13, 2011 at 12:08 AM Article by Unknown 0 Comments



Google added games to its Google+ social network yesterday, and then Facebook updated its gaming platform with a new Game Ticker, full screen support, and the ability to favorite games later the same day. Google+ has only 16 games right now, made by 10 game developers, while Facebook has developers from more than 190 countries building apps and games on its platform. That’s not where the ultimate comparison should be though. You see, Google has just started a social games price war with Facebook.

Wait, what do you mean? Social games on Facebook and Google+ are free! Well, that’s true, at least for most games. There is one huge aspect of online games that many often forget about: in-game transactions. Virtual items are not going to necessarily cost less for you on Google+, but they will for the developer. Google knows it needs to win over developers to get games on its new social network, and it’s starting by significantly undercutting Facebook on the commission price.

Facebook charges a 30 percent commission on any transactions that use its Facebook Credits virtual currency, which is now required in all games on the company’s platform. Google has decided to start off with a 5 percent commission for Google+ Games.

Sure, Google+’s 5 percent commission is just promotional, or at least, that’s what Google+ games product manager Punit Soni told VentureBeat. Soni claims Google doesn’t yet know when the promotion will end or what the company will charge developers on a regular basis, but I’m willing to bet that Google will keep its price significantly under the 30 percent mark.

The 30 percent number may seem high, but it’s actually a standard in the industry. Both Apple and Google take 30 percent of the revenue app developers make on the companies’ respective mobile app stores.
This social games price war is nothing new for Google: when the company launches a new platform, it often makes a point to undercut its competitor. After all, Mountain View gives Android away for free. The search giant makes enough money from Google AdSense (97 percent of its revenue comes from ads) that it doesn’t necessarily need to make sure that many of its products, be it Android or Google+, are profitable by themselves.

Palo Alto will definitely try to hold on to the 30 percent commission number for as long as possible. If Facebook ever feels threatened by Google+ in the social games market – meaning if social game developers ever start leaving Facebook for Google+ en masse – that number will probably be slashed. In the meantime, the social networking giant will simply boast about how much game developers actually make, despite the higher commission to Facebook, mainly because the platform has 750 million users and counting.

Summary: Google has started a price war with Facebook: the search giant is charging developers a 5 percent commission for in-game transactions, compared to social networking giant’s 30 percent.

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