Blame it on market fatigue, a shift to Xiaomi-style low-cost high-feature phones, or a general lack of interest in the product, but sale of Samsung’s (KRX: 005930) Galaxy S5 have come in well below expectations.

According to numbers first published by The Wall Street Journal, sales of Samsung’s flagship phone hit the 12 million point within the first three months of it being on sale. This is approximately four million less than the S4, and approximately 40% less than what the company projected. Believing that demand for the S5 would be higher than its predecessor, the company produced 20% more stock which has led to, as The Journal reports, units “piling up in warehouses.” In the ultra competitive China market, dominated by local success story Xiaomi, sales were down 50%.

For Samsung, this comes as simply another blow in what is certainly the company’s most challenging year yet. Samsung’s recent earnings in October showed a steep decline in profitability, with nearly a 60% drop in overall profit and a 74% drop in profit in its mobile division year-over-year. In addition, Samsung’s recently spun off display unit is undergoing management reform for its poor performance and the company’s 14nm FinFET process appears to be delayed.

Sources that spoke to The Journal say that a shakeup in Samsung’s upper leadership is likely as the first step to reform the company and once again make it competitive. But until official word is released these are only rumors and Samsung is mum on the issue.

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Samsung’s (KRX:005935) earnings for the third quarter of 2014 were down nearly 50% year over year and 33% from last quarter. The company reported 46 trillion Won in revenues, which comes out to about $45 billion in revenues for all of the company’s various divisions. Samsung reported 4.22 Trillion Won in profit, which translates to about $4 billion in profit, which is still fairly significant compared to most of its competitors (excluding Apple).

However, Samsung saw significant shrinkage of revenue and profits across the board in the third quarter with virtually all of its consumer business divisions seeing shrinkage while their component divisions (Semiconductor and Display) saw growth. When compared to the previous quarter, Samsung’s sales overall were down 9% quarter over quarter and 20% year over year, very worrying numbers for a company that is supposed to be the industry leader. The primary reason for most of this shrinkage has to do with the fact that Samsung is seeing renewed competition in all of their consumer divisions, especially from LG which competes in many of the same consumer goods segments that Samsung does and presents the most challenging products. In fact, LG saw record smartphone shipments last quarter, shipping 16.8 million smartphones which was the most the company had ever shipped before.

Samsung’s mobile division saw a decrease of 15% quarter over quarter and a decrease of 29% year over year in terms of sales and saw operating profit shrink by a whopping 74%. Samsung’s consumer electronics division, which includes TVs and other consumer electronics barely saw an operating profit in the quarter decreasing by 94% quarter over quarter and 85% year over year.

Only Samsung Semiconductor actually saw growth in both quarterly and year over year profitability and sales while the display division dragged down the whole device solutions segment with almost no profitability as well.

Samsung’s outlook for the next quarter, however, is a bit rosier as it is the holiday shopping quarter and they expect demand to increase across the board for virtually all of its products. However, they did not guide any profitability relative to year over year comparisons. Plus, the fourth quarter will look very good compared to this quarter, which may have been one of Samsung’s very worst in a long time.

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In a conversation with Apple’s (NASDAQ: APPL) Senior Vice President of Design, Jony Ive, Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter sat down and talked to Ive about the company’s latest products and even their competitors.

Ive brought up an interesting point when they were talking about how the iPhone’s design had moved from having curved edges, to sharp edges and then back to curved again. Then, Ive started to talk about the iPhone and numerous prototypes that they had made, including ones with large screens. You can listen right here.

Ive calls competitors’ phones ‘big and clunky’ and says that many of their competitors’ devices are in fact big and clunky when the reality for Apple is actually very similar. In fact, if you were to hold the 5.5″ iPhone 6 Plus and put it up against something like LG’s G3, then you would realize that Apple’s iPhone is actually a bigger and clunkier phone, noticeably so. The LG G3 actually has the exact same screen size as the iPhone 6 Plus, but has a smaller body and a higher resolution display. So not only do you get a smaller phone with the same size display, but the pixel density and image quality of that display is arguably better as well.

LG has done a fantastic job with the G3 and there’s no denying that they have. Jony Ive was smart not to mention any of their competitors, but he’s clearly calling out Samsung here since Samsung is Apple’s #1 competitor and still makes fairly ‘clunky’ phones with their Galaxy Note series of smartphones as well as the Galaxy Mega phones which are even larger and more unwieldy to the normal human hand.

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In a blog, Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) stated that it has filed patent infringement complaints with the US District Court in Delaware (where most US companies are incorporated) as well as with the International Trade Comission regarding Samsung (KRX:005935) and Qualcomm’s (NASDAQ:QCOM) infringement of its patents (You can view the complaints here (ITC) and here (Delaware)) .

Nvidia is alleging that Samsung’s devices that use Qualcomm’s chips are infringing upon Nvidia’s own technologies that have been patented. Not just that, but by filing a complaint with the ITC, Nvidia is seeking that such devices that infringe upon these patents be banned from importation and sale within the United States.

The devices that Nvidia claims infringe upon their patents include the Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Note Edge, Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 3, and Galaxy S4 as well as the Galaxy Tab S and Galaxy Note Pro. Nvidia claims seven different patents were violated by Samsung’s Exynos processors as well as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors. The Qualcomm Snapdragon processors that are claimed to infringe upon these patents include the Snapdragon S4 (using the Adreno 225), Snapdragon 400 (using the Adreno 305), Snapdragon 600 (using the Adreno 320), Snapdragon 800 and 801 (using the Adreno 330), and Snapdragon 805 (using the Adreno 420).

A careful reading Nvidia’s patent infringement complaint shows that Nvidia has made a clear decision here to go after Samsung and Qualcomm. Obviously, this hurts Nvidia’s chances of ever landing a design win inside of Samsung, but by going after Samsung and Qualcomm, the company goes after the biggest seller of Android smartphones and the biggest seller of Android smartphone SoCs. Additionally, the complaint states that Nvidia is claiming that Samsung infringes on their GPU patents by saying Samsung uses Mali and PowerVR graphics, which aren’t actually theirs but rather graphics they license from ARM and Imagination technologies, however Nvidia has chosen not to include them in the suit.

Qualcomm and Samsung are not GPU pioneers or innovators in graphics technology. Qualcomm dominates the global market for smartphone applications processors, with a market share exceeding 50%, and is also a leader in tablet application processors. Samsung leads the global market in sales of smartphones, selling about twice as many as its nearest competitor, and is also a global leader in the sales of tablet computers, nearly tripling its market share over the past two years. Many of Samsung’s smartphones and tablet computers are powered by mobile processors supplied by Qualcomm, which use GPUs commercially known as
“Adreno.” Other smartphones and tablets sold by Samsung use GPUs commercially known as “Mali” or “PowerVR.” All of these products infringe the Asserted Patents. The market success of Qualcomm and Samsung in these areas is built on the back of NVIDIA’s pioneering graphics technology, and Qualcomm and Samsung continue to release new products using NVIDIA’s technology.

The patents in question,  6,198,488, 6,992,667,  7,038,685, 7,015,913, 6,697,063, 7,209,140 and 6,690,372 all pertain in one way or another to graphics patents and it appears quite clear that Nvidia is attacking the two biggest players in Tegra’s own mobile SoC space.

The claims Nvidia makes are all utility patents and they go into deep technical detail about certain graphics processes that Nvidia believes Qualcomm and Samsung are infringing upon. The reality of the situation is that Nvidia could theoretically sue Apple, Imagination Technologies, ARM and virtually any smartphone or SoC manufacturer in the world for patent infringement based upon these claims. But Nvidia is choosing not to instead going after Samsung and Qualcomm, and really it seems like Samsung is just collateral damage here, but it could also be that Nvidia wants to weaken Samsung in order to make room for other vendors that might use their chips like Tegra K1. It could also be that Nvidia may just want to generate IP licensing revenue from all of Samsung’s billions of dollars in sales of Galaxy devices and that could be good enough for them. Until we get some comment from Qualcomm and this thing actually goes to court, we probably won’t know the outcome of this suit. Once again, the tech industry continues to sue one another for patent infringement.

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As Samsung always does, sometimes very well and sometimes horrifically, they like to advertise their products. It has without a doubt had a massive impact on the company’s image and virtually turned all Android smartphones and smartwatches into Samsung devices in the eyes of the layman. Most people nowadays just decide between two brands for the most part, Samsung or Apple. Sure, it makes things easier and there are plenty of other phones out there, like HTC’s One M8, but that doesn’t change the fact that most people think in a binary nature.

So, it comes as no surprise that Samsung followed up one of their most successful advertisements bashing Apple with yet another one that bashed Apple where it hurts, battery life. Their original bashing commercial made Apple’s iPhone seem old and tired compared to Samsung’s Galaxy S3 which had a bigger screen and LTE which the Apple devices didn’t yet. So, they were obviously trying to bash Apple where it hurt back then and they’re repeating the same formula this time but by bashing them on battery life. This is likely because Samsung knows that Apple will be releasing devices with larger screens, as rumored and will probably suffer from the same battery life issues of the current generation. A lot of people do get pretty good battery life out of their iPhones, but there’s also no denying that I’ve seen dozens of people with iPhones charging them in any wall socket they can find, more so than ANY other smartphone users I’ve ever seen.

Samsung is clearly trying to capitalize here on what people see every day while going out and traveling. The ironic part is that most of the people that are searching for power plugs are likely going to have to do the same with any Android phone they get, it just happens that they’re currently iPhone users. Also, using something like a Mophie juicepack case would also aleviate this problem which is one of the reasons why you don’t see as many people walking around with their chargers like they used to. However, this still means that Apple fundamentally has a power issue and that you have to make your iPhone twice as thick and MUCH uglier just so that you can get a full day out of the device.

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So, last night T-Mobile made a lot of announcements with their new Uncarrier 5 event, that follows their Uncarrier 3.0 and 4.0 which eventually rolled into their Uncarrier 6 strategy as well. So, we can call last night’s event Uncarrier 5-6. Anyways, last night T-Mobile made three big announcements, mostly circled around their network and how they plan to make their network the best in the US at the most reasonable prices of all their competitors.

T-Mobile’s Uncarrier 5.0 Event, Image Credit: The Verge

Let’s talk about one of the most interesting things T-Mobile has announced so far at the event, and that’s their 7 day free test drive of T-Mobile’s network. T-Mobile’s John Legere basically announced that anyone that wants to try T-Mobile out can do so with an iPhone for free for 7 days to see whether or not the network is up to their expectations. And even more importantly, if it is better than what they’re getting with their current carrier. With this strategy, T-Mobile is being brilliant because one of the easiest ways to sell people something is by letting them try it themselves. And the truth is that its very hard to know whether or not you want to switch to a carrier without actually trying it for yourself. By giving people iPhones to try out the network T-Mobile solves this problem and already puts a device in people’s hands that they’ll likely want to keep anyways. This is something that none of the other carriers are doing and brings down the barrier for consumers to test out the network before they commit, which many people worry about when it comes to T-Mobile. T-Mobile was infamous for horrible coverage and nowadays, most of those issues are resolved but some people don’t know that and this is a perfect way for people to test that out.

T-Mobile Test Drive

In addition to the T-Mobile 7 Day Test Drive, they also announced that they would be further accelerating their rollout of VoLTE and the initial roll-out of Wideband LTE which is just 15 MHz+15 MHz carrier aggregation feature that should allow speeds in excess of 100 Mbps. T-Mobile has tested speeds that nearly read 150 Mbps, but unfortunately for my market T-Mobile is limiting users to 40 Mbps, which makes it a bit difficult to use any sort of Wideband features, even if my phone’s cellular modem supports it.  Currently, 16 of T-Mobile’s markets have enough spectrum to be able to support 15 MHz + 15 MHz carrier aggregation and they will rapidly continue to roll this out as they continue to update their network. It is nice to see the carriers finally supporting carrier aggregation as devices like the recently announced Samsung Galaxy S5 LTE-A will make good use of the network’s carrier aggregation features.

The below image is a Speedtest that someone took while at the T-Mobile Uncarrier 5.0 event, Myriam Joire, who was able to test with the network that was available inside the venue. We’ve got permission to use this screenshot so that you guys can see for yourselves exactly what kinds of speeds are possible in the near future or right now depending on where you live (see the list above).

Carrier Aggregation – Image courtesy of @Tnkgrl (Myriam Joire)

There were also a recent set of nationwide speed tests of networks across the country and T-Mobile came in first or second in many of them, including PCMag’s own which found T-Mobile almost on par with Verizon, who charges significantly more and has much less pro-consumer policies. And if you look at the tested speeds below, in the San Diego test you can see that T-Mobile had the best average speeds in all tests which really is what matters most when you talk about network speeds since the average is what you will usually see, as opposed to the top speed or slowest speed. However, in San Diego, T-Mobile is also limiting users to 40 Mbps (as I have been complaining about) and can now confirm that PCMag also had the same experience that I have.

In addition to their accelerated LTE Wideband roll-out, T-Mobile is also rolling out more of their Voice over LTE (VoLTE). T-Mobile is looking to beat their competitors to the punch with their HD voice/VoLTE features that would enable you to have very high quality voice in addition to sharing that signal over your data connection, reducing the amount of radios that have to stay on while a phone is connected to the network. The significantly improved audio will only be available on certain devices, but since T-Mobile announced their VoLTE roll-out they have already launched VoLTE in 15 markets and are expecting to launch nationwide by the end of the year.

In addition to the network improvements and the 7 Day Test Drive, T-Mobile made a pretty significant announcement which they call Uncarrier 6.0 by ‘setting your music free’. Essentially, what T-Mobile is doing is that they are no longer counting music streaming against your monthly data plan if you don’t have an unlimited data plan. The apps that T-Mobile currently will not count towards your monthly data plan usage are: Pandora, Rhapsody, iHeartRadio, iTunes Radio, Slacker, and Spotify. On top of that, T-Mobile will allow users to vote for music streaming apps that aren’t currently included, which will likely add Google Play Music which oddly isn’t included on T-Mobile’s list of ‘approved’ apps. This is a pretty significant move for T-Mobile to make because a lot of people’s data plans get used up quite a bit by music streaming applications, especially Spotify when you use the high quality feature which can chew up a gigabyte a month or more of data on its own.

Overall, all of these developments are welcome ones by consumers, but there are some problems with T-Mobile’s music streaming pertaining to Net Neutrality that we’ll be addressing in another article.

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Verizon’s new XLTE service is merely a new branding scheme for the company to promote their new 2×20 MHz AWS band of data service. As of right now, most users are on Verizon’s 700 MHz frequency which is slowly getting overcrowded, so naturally Verizon would want to deploy a second frequency (which they have available). They are doing this by utilizing their 1700 MHz frequency AWS block  (similar to what T-Mobile has) in a 2×20 MHz implementation which ultimately results in speeds at or exceeding 80 Mbps. Right now, on Verizon’s 2×10 MHz block in their 700 MHz spectrum block most users are getting around half that, at 40 Mbps or less. Some users are getting more, but not much more.

So, Verizon’s XLTE as of yesterday has launched in a few dozen cities on a handful of devices and you don’t have to do anything other than live in the right city and have the right phone in order to get these faster AWS speeds. We would name the exact cities, but there are literally too many to name in order to not just give you a list of like 50 or 60 cities. The link above will let you know if your city is on Verizon’s XLTE list or not. However, even if you’re in an XLTE area, you will still need to have an XLTE enabled device and those aren’t necessarily that common since they have to be newer devices with the right modems inside. A full list of devices can be found on Verizon’s website.

In terms of smartphones, you have the following phones:

iPhone 5S, LG G2, Nokia Lumia Icon, Samsung Galaxy S5, Droid Mini by Motorola, HTC One M8, Apple iPhone 5C, DROID Maxx by Motorola, Moto X, LG Lucid 3, Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Samsung ATIV SE, HTC One Max, Samsung Galaxy S4, Blackberry Z30 and the Blackberry Q10

if you have a Verizon LTE tablet you need to have the following tablets to have XLTE service:

LG G Pad 8.3 LTE, Apple iPad Air, Apple iPad Mini, Samsung Galaxy tab 2, Samsung Galaxy Note Pro, Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1

And if you have a Verizon hotspot or USB modem you need to have  the following devices:
Verizon Jetpack 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot MiFi 5510L, Verizon Jetpack 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot MHS291L and the Verizon 4G LTE USB Modem UML295

While we haven’t had a chance to test these speeds quite yet, we’ll be sure to report back to you relatively soon with our Verizon HTC One M8 (which is capable of XLTE) and since we’re usually between San Diego and San Francisco, both markets are capable of supporting Verizon’s new XLTE service. Do keep in mind, however, that this is not LTE-Advanced, which is the next version of LTE service that is already running in places like Korea where they are able to get speeds in excess of 100 Mbps over commercially available devices. LTE-Advanced brings a whole host of features to smartphones, many of which are already inside of those phones, but the networks are simply not ready for quite yet. We know that Verizon is already working on their LTE-Advanced network and that this is likely a step forward in that direction in order to help them prepare for the jump.

The post Verizon Launches New 2×20 MHz AWS XLTE Service appeared first on VR World.

Verizon’s new XLTE service is merely a new branding scheme for the company to promote their new 2×20 MHz AWS band of data service. As of right now, most users are on Verizon’s 700 MHz frequency which is slowly getting overcrowded, so naturally Verizon would want to deploy a second frequency (which they have available). They are doing this by utilizing their 1700 MHz frequency AWS block  (similar to what T-Mobile has) in a 2×20 MHz implementation which ultimately results in speeds at or exceeding 80 Mbps. Right now, on Verizon’s 2×10 MHz block in their 700 MHz spectrum block most users are getting around half that, at 40 Mbps or less. Some users are getting more, but not much more.

So, Verizon’s XLTE as of yesterday has launched in a few dozen cities on a handful of devices and you don’t have to do anything other than live in the right city and have the right phone in order to get these faster AWS speeds. We would name the exact cities, but there are literally too many to name in order to not just give you a list of like 50 or 60 cities. The link above will let you know if your city is on Verizon’s XLTE list or not. However, even if you’re in an XLTE area, you will still need to have an XLTE enabled device and those aren’t necessarily that common since they have to be newer devices with the right modems inside. A full list of devices can be found on Verizon’s website.

In terms of smartphones, you have the following phones:

iPhone 5S, LG G2, Nokia Lumia Icon, Samsung Galaxy S5, Droid Mini by Motorola, HTC One M8, Apple iPhone 5C, DROID Maxx by Motorola, Moto X, LG Lucid 3, Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Samsung ATIV SE, HTC One Max, Samsung Galaxy S4, Blackberry Z30 and the Blackberry Q10

if you have a Verizon LTE tablet you need to have the following tablets to have XLTE service:

LG G Pad 8.3 LTE, Apple iPad Air, Apple iPad Mini, Samsung Galaxy tab 2, Samsung Galaxy Note Pro, Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1

And if you have a Verizon hotspot or USB modem you need to have  the following devices:
Verizon Jetpack 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot MiFi 5510L, Verizon Jetpack 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot MHS291L and the Verizon 4G LTE USB Modem UML295

While we haven’t had a chance to test these speeds quite yet, we’ll be sure to report back to you relatively soon with our Verizon HTC One M8 (which is capable of XLTE) and since we’re usually between San Diego and San Francisco, both markets are capable of supporting Verizon’s new XLTE service. Do keep in mind, however, that this is not LTE-Advanced, which is the next version of LTE service that is already running in places like Korea where they are able to get speeds in excess of 100 Mbps over commercially available devices. LTE-Advanced brings a whole host of features to smartphones, many of which are already inside of those phones, but the networks are simply not ready for quite yet. We know that Verizon is already working on their LTE-Advanced network and that this is likely a step forward in that direction in order to help them prepare for the jump.

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Shortly after Samsung’s flagship phone launched only 2 weeks ago, people started noticing some issues with the Samsung Galaxy S5 camera. At first, they were rumors of issues, but then people started banding together in common resources like XDA-Developers’ forum and reporting the same “Warning: Camera Failed” error message. In that thread, there were about 20 or so people complaining about the issue, which didn’t really seem like that much, but the thread has more than doubled in size now. Even though, based on the amount of replies we’re seeing here, it doesn’t necessarily seem like this is a very widespread issue as the thread itself hasn’t even broken 100 replies yet. Usually when there’s a major issue with an Android device’s hardware or software, XDA is going to be blowing up with people replying and comparing their experiences with each other and looking for possible fixes or solutions.

In the case of the Galaxy S5 camera problem with the “Warning: Camera Failed” error, it appears as though the only solution is to contact either Samsung or Verizon directly (if that’s your carrier). We have contacted Verizon for comment regarding this issue, however, they have already made a statement on Twitter regarding this potential Galaxy S5 camera issue. Since these devices are so new, depending on the state, you could actually return the device for a full refund and get a new one or try to process a replacement through Verizon or Samsung. However, since this device is so new, I don’t think there are many refurbished Galaxy S5s out there. So, it will be fairly easy to get a new device to replace the one with the Galaxy S5 camera issue, regardless of how you choose to do it. And you know, you could end up getting something else if you’re put off by the experience (depending on your state’s return policy laws).

What seems odd about this whole situation is that it appears that most of the Samsung Galaxy S5’s with the camera issue seem to be Verizon branded ones. Which makes me think that this probably isn’t a hardware issue, but rather some sort of a software issue that is specific to the Verizon variant of the device. And it is only present in a small percentage of Galaxy S5’s since this doesn’t seem to have impacted as many people as it may seem to have based on the social media and press amplification of the issue. It does, however, make Samsung look bad because they are having issues with their camera, which is supposed to be the crowning feature of this new phone over the Galaxy S4, which had a mediocre camera at best. This doesn’t appear to have affected Verizon or Samsung’s faith in the device as they remain to keep the device for sale on Verizon’s site at $199 with 2 year contract and $599 without, for the 16 GB variant.

We’ll continue to follow this and any other issues that the Samsung Galaxy S5 might be having, but hopefully this was a very small instance of failures and that the rest of you will enjoy your new phones happily for the next… 2 years (realistically, probably a year until you want to upgrade).

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