Samsung Launches Free Trial Program for iPhone Users
Samsung today launched a new promotion called Ultimate Test Drive, a program designed to get iPhone users to switch away from their Apple devices to Samsung ones (via Engadget). The Test Drive coincides with the launch of Samsung’s newest devices, the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge+.
For just one dollar, you can try one of our latest Samsung phones for 30 days with no obligation. Your test drive kit will come with the phone of your choice, an activated sim card, and a step-by-step guide to help you start your test drive.
To sign up for the promotion, iPhone users have to visit SamsungPromotions.com on their device and select their phone. Samsung tells Engadget that the promotion is compatible with any U.S. carrier. It’s unclear whether Samsung will put a hold on trial-goers credit cards and, if so, how much that hold could be.
Last year, T-Mobile launched a trial program for users to test out its network with an iPhone 5s for a week. T-Mobile placed a $699.99 hold on a user’s credit or debit card, charging it if the phone wasn’t returned at the end of the trial.
Following the launch of both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Samsung has seen a significant profit drop in its mobile division as some of its customers opted to switch from Samsung devices to the larger-screened Apple devices. Before the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, screen size was one of the major differentiators between Samsung and Apple’s smartphones, but now Samsung must find other ways to differentiate from Apple. Thus far, the Korean company has focused on faster charging and the S6 Edge’s curved display screen. The Ultimate Test Drive is Samsung’s latest attempt to win back some customers.
Apple Debuts New ‘Apple Pay’ Ad in Ongoing ‘If It’s Not An iPhone’ Campaign
Apple today debuted a new iPhone-focused video featuring Apple Pay as part of its ongoing “If it’s not an iPhone, it’s not an iPhone” advertising campaign. The video, available on the company’s YouTube channel, features an iPhone being used to make different Apple Pay purchases.
The iPhone is centric to the video and is shown going through several different Apple Pay transactions as a voiceover explains Apple Pay and its features in a clever rhyme. At the end of the video, Apple ends with its latest signature tagline, “If it’s not an iPhone, it’s not an iPhone.”
This is an iPhone. And this is Apple Pay. Which lets you shop in a faster, simpler way. For groceries, and kicks, toys, and your lunchtime fix. It’s safer than a credit card and keeps your info yours. And you can already use it in over one million stores.
“Apple Pay” is the fifth ad in this particular campaign, which focuses on the different capabilities of the iPhone. Other videos in the series have included “Loved,” “Hardware & Software,” “Amazing Apps,” and “Photos & Videos,” each with catchy music, visuals, and voiceovers.
In addition to its latest video ads, Apple also recently introduced a new iPhone-oriented web campaign, “Why There’s Nothing Quite Like an iPhone,” focusing on features that differentiate the iPhone from competing products. The mini site highlights the iPhone’s integration of hardware and software, wide range of apps, camera, resistance to malware, Touch ID, and Apple Pay.
Apple TV Fell to Fourth Most Popular Streaming Media Device in U.S. in 2014
The Apple TV was the fourth most popular streaming media device in the United States in 2014, according to new data compiled by Parks Associates. Sales of the Apple TV were eclipsed by sales of devices from Roku, Google, and Amazon.
Roku continues to be the most popular brand when it comes to streaming media devices, representing 34 percent of units sold, while Google and its Chromecast were responsible for 23 percent of device sales. Amazon’s Fire TV was the third most popular choice, while Apple came in fourth. In 2013, the Apple TV was the third most popular streaming media device, but in 2014, it fell behind the newly introduced Fire TV and Fire TV Stick.
Combined, streaming media devices from Apple, Roku, Google, and Amazon were responsible for 86 percent of all streaming media device sales to U.S. broadband households.
According to the data, almost 20 percent of U.S. households now own one or more streaming media players. When it comes to ongoing usage, Roku devices are unsurprisingly at the top of the list. 37 percent of households regularly use a Roku device, 19 percent use a Google Chromecast, 17 percent use an Apple TV, and 14 percent use an Amazon Fire TV/Fire TV Stick.
With a new Apple TV on the horizon, the streaming media device market could shift in Apple’s favor in 2015 and 2016. The new Apple TV is a radical departure from the existing Apple TV, which has not been updated for several years. It will include a full App Store that supports games and apps, Siri integration, a refreshed design and operating system, more storage space, and a touch-based remote control.
The Apple TV won’t be able to compete with devices like the Google Chromecast or the Amazon Fire TV on price, but it will bring a host of features not offered by other products.
Apple Creates Massive Floral Window Installation at Selfridges to Promote Apple Watch
Apple today launched a new Apple Watch advertising effort in London, decorating the 24 windows of the Selfridges department store with a massive floral installation. Each window has flowers that were inspired by the flowers that can be found within the “Motion” face on the Apple Watch.
Design magazine Wallpaper has shared photos and details on the installation, which uses 3D flowers created through a range of methods from resin casting to 3D printing. Each window also displays an Apple Watch with a watch face that matches the flowers.
Image via Wallpaper
There are eight different flower variations decorating the windows, each of which was scaled, sculpted, and hand-painted by artists, a process Wallpaper describes as “painstaking and meticulous as the original photography.”
Earlier this year, Apple Human Interface Chief Alan Dye explained the effort that went into each of Apple’s “Motion” watch faces. Apple shot all of the animated flower, butterfly, and jellyfish photos used in the watch face. For the flowers in particular, Apple shot photos as they bloomed, with one single flower taking 285 hours and more than 24,000 shots.
Image via Wallpaper
For the window installation, artists created 24 large, 50 medium, 240 “small plus” and 5,525 small flowers, split across the aforementioned eight varieties. Paul Deneve, formerly the CEO of Yves Saint Laurent, had a hand in the window designs and gave a statement to Wallpaper.
We are thrilled that the flowers of the Apple Watch face have inspired such a beautiful design and to see it come to life in this amazing installation, reflected in all 24 of Selfridges’ historic windows,’ says Paul Deneve, Apple’s vice president of special projects.
Apple’s flower installation follows two other installations that have been used to decorate the Selfridges department store, including “Chromosphere,” which displayed the Apple Watch in colored orbs of light, and “Butterflies,” featuring a huge kaleidoscope of fluttering butterflies.
Image via Retail Design World
Selfridges in London is the home of the iconic Wonder Room, a section of the department store that sells luxury jewelry and watches. The Apple Watch is sold from a pop-up shop located towards the entrance of the Wonder Room, with all models from Sport to Edition available for purchase.
Giphy Cam wants to be the Instagram of GIFs
Everybody loves a good animated GIF but they’re just such a pain to create from a mobile device. Or rather, they were a pain to create on mobile devices now that Giphy’s new mobile camera app is available. The Giphy Cam is a free iOS app that allows users to create and share animated gifs as easily they do overproduced shots of their lunches.
Giphy Cam with a 5-shot burst and 3D filter
The app, which is reportedly in the works for the Android platform, captures either a 10 second full-motion clip or a 5-shot burst of stitched-together still images. Users can then add one of 10 Instagram-esque filters as well as any of 40 overlaid special effects and props before sharing their creation across the social media spectrum. Users can also just save their new gif-based masterpiece to the camera roll for local storage.
Giphy Cam on loop with X-Ray Specs overlay
Filed under:
Cellphones, Wireless, Internet, HD, Mobile, Apple, Google
Tags: android, animatedgifs, apple, camera, cameraroll, effects, filters, gifs, giphy, giphycam, google, ios, mobilepostcross, photography, sfx
Samsung’s global market share continues to dip, falls over 5% from last year
Samsung’s Galaxy S6 doesn’t look it’s moving the needle in a positive direction for the company, as the latest market share numbers show Samsung’s global dominance continuing to slip to Apple and cheaper Chinese OEMs.
In Q2 of 2014, Samsung held 26.2% of the global market, more than doubling Apple’s market share. This year, Apple has steadily increased their market share to nearly 15% while smaller vendors like Huawei and Xiaomi have scooped up more of the low end, leaving Samsung with just 21.9% market share. That’s over a 5% drop from a year ago, which is pretty substantial.
On the high end, Samsung is still struggling to compete with Apple, especially as Apple expands their lineup to more and more countries. On the low end, it’s nearly impossible to compete with the volume of cheap smartphone manufacturers, and with many Chinese companies producing perfectly good phones and selling them with razor thin margins, it’s clear that Samsung is going to keep struggling if they want to try to hang on to both segments of the market.
source: 9to5 Google
Come comment on this article: Samsung’s global market share continues to dip, falls over 5% from last year
Apple Disables Dashboard by Default in Latest OS X El Capitan Beta
Apple has quietly disabled Dashboard by default in the seventh beta of OS X El Capitan, an unsurprising move given the ten-year-old widget feature on Mac has not been updated in over four years and looks increasingly poised for retirement. Dashboard was similarly disabled by default on OS X Yosemite.
Latest OS X El Capitan beta disables Dashboard by default. Not long now, old friend 😥 pic.twitter.com/Cp2ecE6Fa2
— Jeremy Burge ⌚️ (@jeremyburge) August 20, 2015
While a few websites claim that Apple has removed Dashboard from OS X El Capitan entirely, the feature can be re-enabled by opening System Preferences > Mission Control and choosing “As Space” from the Dashboard drop-down menu. Then, tap on the Dashboard key on your keyboard to bring up the window.
Dashboard was introduced on OS X Tiger in 2005 and acts as a secondary desktop for widgets such as a calculator, calendar, clock, weather, stocks, sticky notes, mini games, dictionary, flight tracker and more. Widgets can be added or removed from Dashboard by clicking on the plus or minus buttons in the bottom-left corner.
The worldwide smartphone market is slowing down
There’s a statistic floating around that says that nearly everyone on Earth has a smartphone, but just over half of them have access to proper sanitation. Between that stat and this report from Gartner, it looks as if a great many smartphone makers should think about starting their own toilet-making businesses. The research firm believes that while the smartphone market is still growing, that rate of growth has now dropped back to 2013 levels. That’s because China, long-regarded as a rich seam of un-tapped phone buyers has been exhausted, which is what’s prompted these firms to turn to India and Africa. If that all sounds a bit too business-y, here’s the simplified version: everyone who can buy a smartphone already has one, and those people who don’t probably can’t afford them.
Gartner has also tallied the winners and losers for the second three-month period of 2015, and Samsung falls victim to the law of large numbers. Despite shipping just four million fewer devices this year than last, it saw market share fall by 4.3 percent. Samsung’s lunch was mostly gobbled up by Huawei and Xiaomi, while Lenovo, fat and happy after its purchase of Motorola, still managed to watch its figures fall. The other big winner was Apple which, the firm claims, sold upwards of 12 million more iPhones than it did in the same period last year. Gartner also thinks that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus managed to steal away high-end customers from other brands as well as gain plenty more fans in China.
Like the kids who got picked last for school sports, spare a thought for Windows Phone, which has just 2.5 percent market share. That’s still impressive when compared to BlackBerry, which is now marked down as having just 0.3 percent of the world’s smartphone business.
In terms of predicting the future, it looks as if there’s a growing divide between the dirt-cheap manufacturers and firms that are still producing higher-end Android phones. Huawei, ZTE, TCL and Micromax are all considered success stories having turned their attentions to India and other emerging markets. Sony, HTC and Samsung, to a lesser extent, are all marked down as losers that “struggled to achieve growth at the high end of the market.” Given how cheap it is to enter the Android phone business, there’s no shortage of companies who want to undercut the established players. If that continues, however, it’s not going to be long before we see more than just HTC being put on a watch list.
[Image Credit: Bloomberg / Getty]
Filed under:
Cellphones, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Google
Source:
Gartner
Tags: apple, Gartner, google, microsoft, samsung
‘iPad Pro’ Production Reaffirmed for September-October Ahead of Rumored Late 2015 Launch
Taiwanese website DigiTimes today reported the “iPad Pro” will enter production by the end of the third quarter and go into mass production in the fourth quarter, corroborating a recent KGI report that said the rumored 12.9-inch tablet would enter mass production in September-October.
“iPad Pro” mockup places 12.9-inch tablet alongside iPad Air and iPad mini
The report claims the “iPad Pro” will be released in the fourth quarter, with an estimated 4-5 million shipments in 2015. DigiTimes reported in July that the “iPad Pro” could launch in mid-November as Foxconn prepared to start supplying components at the time, but the release timeframe remains uncertain.
The report claims Sharp will be the main supplier of LCD displays for the tablet, while Foxconn subsidiary General Interface Solution (GIS) will provide touch panels. Samsung Display and TPK will be secondary suppliers of LCD assemblies and touch modules respectively, according to the report.
Apple Watch Expands to Retail Locations Outside of Apple Stores in France
Apple today continued the expansion of retail locations that offer the Apple Watch to customers, this time expanding the wearable device’s availability in France (via iPhone Addict) [Google Translate]. The company confirmed customers in Paris will be able to purchase the Watch at Fnac locations within the city, starting with just one store alongside the Fnac official website.
The Fnac retail store — essentially equivalent to Best Buy — initially selling the Apple Watch is the one located at the Champs Elysées, and will officially begin to sell the wearable on August 21. Other Fnac stores will begin to offer the Watch “within the next week,” and the store’s employees will be trained to field questions and concerns from customers regarding Apple’s smartwatch.
Fnac will be the first European brand to offer the Apple Watch. Initially, it will be possible to buy it on the site of Fnac and at Fnac Champs Elysées. Other Fnac will have it within the next week, warns the sign. Employees will be trained to answer questions from interested users and thus better guide customers.
As iPhone Addict points out, the availability of the Apple Watch in new retail stores could dramatically increase sales for Apple in France, considering that there are only 18 Apple Stores in the country but over 100 Fnac locations. There was no confirmation of the exact range of models to be sold at Fnac, although it’s likely the company will follow Best Buy’s footsteps in offering the Apple Watch Sport and mid-tier Apple Watch in both the 38mm and 42mm sizing options alongside multiple Apple-branded bands and third-party accessories.
AIVAnet 