Samsung Materials Affiliates Hold Investment Due to Slow Business

It has been about four months since the electronic material research center of the Samsung Group was opened in Suwon City, Gyeonggi Province. However, its subsidiaries’ move-in is continuing to be delayed. Besides, the recent poor performances of Cheil Industries, Samsung SDI, and Samsung Fine Chemicals and their investment postponement announcements are adding difficulties to the Samsung Group’s plan for the promotion of its material business segment.

At present, Cheil Industries has yet to complete its relocation, and Samsung Fine Chemicals is planning to be housed there from next month, according to its plan to move the headquarters to Suwon. Only Samsung SDI has finished the relocation so far.

Under the circumstances, some industry insiders point out that the Samsung Group has failed to draw up a big picture for the restructuring of its materials business arms. “The overhaul is likely to be led by Samsung Electronics, but no specific plan has been suggested yet,” said one of them, adding, “It seems that Samsung is suffering from the lack of a control tower.”

The trouble has been compounded by the subsidiaries’ less-than-expected earnings for the fourth quarter of last year. Not a few investment plans have been put on hold, signaling some change in their long-term business strategies. Cheil Industries and Samsung SDI recorded losses in that quarter while Samsung Fine Chemicals’ annual operating profits fell below zero. The first has decided to reexamine its 1.8 trillion won (US$1.68 billion) investment plan for the next three years. The third is going to pace itself as well in manufacturing polysilicon and positive electrode active materials for secondary batteries.

Things were quite different earlier last year. At that time, Cheil Industries took over Novaled, which owns OLED patents, and sold its fashion business unit to Samsung Everland to speed up the reorganization. However, the pace has been significantly slowed, due mainly to the poor performance of Samsung Electronics, one of its major clients.

The group has not come up with any countermeasures, either. This means that the future of the subsidiaries of Samsung is not entirely rosy in the short term.

Samsung Fine Chemicals is moving ahead with its polysilicon and active material businesses, through collaboration with SunEdison (formerly MEMC) of the US and TODA of Japan. Samsung SDI, in the meantime, is producing products based on its PDP patent contracts with Seiko, Asahi, Sony, etc. Although they have hundreds of patents and their own R&D teams and projects, these are easily eclipsed by its rivals like LG Chem.

This is why some employees of the companies are claiming that the chemical business unit, rather than electronics, lead the development of the materials business in view of its own characteristics, that is, at least five to 10 years is taken for at least some tangible results. Then, it is Cheil Industries that is to assume the central role. Still, it remains to be seen whether or not Cheil Industries is capable enough when its business showings and relations with the National Pension Service, the largest shareholder, are taken into consideration.

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Samsung Group seems to have a vision with NX30, Galaxy Camera 2

Samsung Galaxy Camera 2 price to be announced around launch

Samsung NX30 has 20.3MP APS-C CMOS Sensor, can capture fast-paced moments in perfect clarity.

At the Samsung Group Forum in Bali, the buzz was all around the updraded versions of a bunch of its mobile devices as well as the enterprise oriented tablets. However, the Korean tech giant also showed that it means business in a segment that it has not really been able to monopolise so far.

The Samsung Group announced the Samsung NX30 and the Samsung Galaxy Camera 2. The first a compact system camera delivering high quality images and the second a sequel to the Galaxy Camera line-up that brings smartphone-like sharing to imaging devices.

The NX30 has an advanced 20.3MP APS-C CMOS Sensor and can capture fast-paced moments in perfect clarity thanks to its 1/8000 sec Shutter speed and the 9 frame per seconds (FPS) continuous shooting function. The NX30's NFC and Wi-Fi capabilities creates a 'eTag & Go'f function that lets users tap and share photos instantly and easily. The Photo Beam feature allows users to transfer images or videos between smartphones or tablets by simply touching devices together.

The Galaxy Camera 2 lets users enjoy the full benefits of the Android platform. Its 16M BSI CMOS Sensor is supported by a 21x Optical Zoom. It also featured an upgraded 1.6 GHz Quad-Core processor supported by a massive 2.0 GB of RAM. The Galaxy Camera 2's 121.2mm (4.8-inch) HD Super Clear Touch LCD adds to the experience.

Samsung will announces the prices closer to the India launch dates.

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Apple eyes smart magnets to attach accessories to your iPad

The iPad already houses magnets that can hold smart covers and cases. Now, a newly-published Apple patent filing envisions a greater attraction for the technology.

(Credit: Apple/USPTO)

The iPad's magnetic personality could help users attach an array of accessories to their tablets.

Published Thursday by the US Patent and Trademark Office, a patent fittingly named "Magnetic Attachment Unit" describes how the iPad's current magnet system could be expanded to hook up with docks, stands, touchpads, joysticks, cameras, other iPads, and even a special magnetic ring. iPad owners would be able to couple the tablet with an accessory without having to rely on the dock connector.

Accessories would connect to any side of the iPad, including the bottom, letting the tablet attach to compatible docks and stands. Apple's iOS would support the technology, so iPad users could attach or detach an accessory by pressing the home button.

Two iPads might even hook up with each other to expand their capabilities. Content displayed on the screen would extend from one iPad to the other. You could also view the screen on one iPad and use the virtual keyboard on the other iPad. Finally, the patent filing describes a magnetic ring that would let you swipe your hand over the screen to activate certain features.

As always, a patent filing doesn't mean the technology will ever appear in the real world. However, since magnets are already built into the iPad to support smart covers, expanding that idea to other accessories seems a natural next step.

And whether or not Apple moves forward on this front, at least one other company wants to tap into the power of magnets. Unveiled by Nano Magnetics at CES in January, a patent-pending device called Nanoport would use magnets to connect mobile devices with each other and with separate accessories.

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Barclays downgrades rating on Apple stock due to maturing smartphone market, tells investors to 'step aside'

Shares of Apple stock slid Thursday morning after investment firm Barclays Capital lowered its rating on shares of the iPhone maker, saying it doesn't expect the stock to break out of its current trading range within the next year, and suggesting its performance could become comparable to that of rival Microsoft.

Analyst Ben A. Reitzes issued a note to investors, provided to AppleInsider, in which he advised them to "step aside," citing a maturing smartphone market that he believes presents limited future growth potential for Apple's iPhone. And without a new "revolutionary" product, he doesn't believe shares of Apple will see a boost anytime soon.

"Frankly, we just couldn't quite bring ourselves to use smart watches or TVs as reasons to raise numbers — nor were we fully convinced that these products could move the needle like new categories did in the old days," Reitzes wrote on Thursday.

The analyst said that as an iPhone user, he's "very excited" about some of the company's new products in the pipeline, with potential innovations in mobile payments, geolocation, and wearable devices. But as an investor, he doesn't see Apple introducing anything as groundbreaking from a financial perspective as the iPhone or iPad.

"We believe Apple's story is all about iPhones and 'new categories' seem to be designed to make the iPhone more useful — but don't necessarily reaccelerate growth in the iPhone category to sustainable double-digit levels," he wrote. "If we were to see evidence that payments and/or new content deals enhance the Web services aspect of Apple vs. Google and others long-term, we may need to reassess this opinion."

Reitzes then went on to cite the valuation of Apple's rival Microsoft from 2000 to 2010, and suggested that Apple might see a similar pattern. The analyst said that he sees "no precedent" that large tech companies can broadly outperform once again after "a tough year or two."

In his eyes, the "law of large numbers" may have caught up with Apple, and the company's gross margins may have peaked.

"As a result, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with saying shares could be range-bound as we move from product cycle to product cycle until we can see Apple creating entirely new markets in the cloud," he said.

Accordingly, Barclays has downgraded Apple from an "overweight" rating to "equal weight," with a continued "neutral" outlook for the company. The firm's price target for shares of AAPL is $570, or about $35 higher than where it is trading as of Thursday morning.

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Samsung Galaxy S5: Most likely features and specs

Rumors and wish lists aside, we have a pretty good idea of the Samsung Galaxy S5's future feature path.

Will the Galaxy S5 event like look like the S4? We'll see.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

In the runup to the Samsung Galaxy S5's Mobile World Congress unveiling next week, we've kept you updated on a long list of rumors about the device, and I've shared the finer details ofwhat I'd really like to see in the S5.

Wish lists and speculation are one thing. Now it's time to spell out the the design, internal components, and other features that the phone will probably have. Call this educated guessing if you'd like. Samsung may still have some tricks to surprise us, but based on Samsung's past actions and the way the market's moving, here's what I expect we'll see out of this marquee phone.

Design and build
We keep hearing that Samsung has an overhauled design plan for the S5, and possibly a chassis with metal elements. It's certainly true that complaints about the plasticky look and feel of Samsung phones motivated the company to add the ridged silver trim around the Galaxy S4and the faux-leather "stitching" on the Galaxy Note 3's back panel.

I'd love to see aluminum parts make an appearance, but rumors aside, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Samsung stuck with its mostly-plastic formula. The inexpensive materials keep phones lighter, production costs lower, and margins higher. Samsung also has its suppliers on lockdown. And as often as some owners and industry-watchers bemoan the lack of premium craftsmanship (myself included), a plastic body hasn't kept Samsung from selling millions of units worldwide.

As far as the rest of the array, we may see an extra sensor or two above the screen, but I expect the layout to remain pretty much as it is now, with a slim bezel around the display and a three-button layout below. Some rumors are pointing to all-touch controls with the Galaxy S5, leaving the physical home button and flanking capacitive buttons behind. Samsung, though, has had great success with the home button. I'd certainly expect to see it make a return to this Galaxy.

As much as I'd love Samsung to change the power button's orientation, or at least the stiffness, I'll be looking for it on the right spine, and for the IR blaster to reappear up top, as it also does on the Galaxy Note 3 and many Samsung tablets.

I'm going to guess that Samsung will stick with its usual muted color palette with shades that initially span white to silver to gray to black.

The Galaxy S4's display is one of its best features.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

Screen standards
The Galaxy S4 has a really nice 5-inch 1080p HD display, but the S5 will have to top that. I stand with the rumors that the phone will carry an ultra HD resolution of 2,560x1,440 pixels, just like China's Vivo Xplay 3S. This is, after all, the industry's next step.

And as for the size? Screen size has been creeping up incrementally over the last several years. I don't see the Galaxy S5's display growing beyond 5.2 inches; that would extend well into "phablet" territory and cannibalize the 5.7-inch Galaxy Note 3.

Samsung is definitely planning more phones with bent screens and curvy, flexible displays, but I don't think the Galaxy S5 have either one.

Right now, those designs are still in R&D mode. While the Samsung Galaxy Round is sold commercially in Korea, this is still a niche product for a limited market. I don't think Samsung would want to take a chance placing a potentially dramatic and polarizing design on a proven hit.

The Galaxy S5 will run Android, but will there be TouchWiz?

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

TouchWiz-flavored Android
Samsung's Android-enhancing TouchWiz overlay is a given for the Galaxy S5. It's Samsung's main vehicle for dispensing heaps of differentiating software extras, and the list grows year after year.

This is what brings us things like that eye-tracking feature I was talking about earlier, as well as lock screen shortcuts, the enhanced quick-access icons in the notification tray, and built-in gestures.

While rumors maintain that Samsung is redesigning TouchWiz -- and maybe scaling it back altogether -- it isn't going anywhere, and I suspect it'll only get beefier, not slimmer, at Samsung keeps adding more features.

Hardware guts
Your heart may flutter at the thought of octa-core processing, and indeed, those chips do exist in phones like the Huawei Honor 3X.

Yet it's a quad-core chipset I think we'll be seeing on the Samsung Galaxy S5, at least for models released here in the US. Samsung has at times released phones with its in-house Exynos processor in some markets, while stocking shelves in other countries with a Qualcomm chip that uses different radios.

In the US, expect an even faster 2+GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 chipset and its Adreno 420 graphics processor. The 805, which Qualcomm announced in November, bakes in support for 4K video capture and playback and promises 40 percent more powerful graphics processing.

I expect a battery with a capacity hovering around 3,000mAh, storage capacity options for 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB versions, and 3GB RAM. You'll be able to extend storage by at least 64GB using a microSD card.

Expect many camera tricks up the Galaxy S5's sleeve.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

Camera and video
I think we're going to see a 16-megapixel camera on the Galaxy S5, if for no other reasons than Samsung will want to move the needle up on all key specs, and that it has experience with this sensor size in a mobile device, the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom (not to mention Samsung cameras.)

Let's also throw in expectations for optical image stabilization, improved low-light performance, and an array of camera filters and tricks. We're entering the era of 5-megapixel front-facing cameras on a handful of devices (Huawei Ascend Mate 2 4G, LG G Pro 2); look for it on the S5 as well.

Along with the Snapdragon 805 chip comes 4K video capability. Samsung will still have to turn it on in the Galaxy S5 for it to work, but with LG's G Pro 2 folding in 4K video, the feature seems like a sure thing here, too.

The GS4 also had an infrared sensor that picked up on gestures.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

More biometrics
Last year at this time, all the buzz crackled and gathered around rumors of the Galaxy S4's eyeball tracking. The thing is, it wound up being a fringe feature whose most useful application is to pause and resume video, and it built on an optional feature in the Galaxy S3 that kept the screen alight as long as your eyes flitted back to it before it dimmed.

This year, we've already seen Apple and HTC apply pressure with fingerprint scanners of their own. Samsung isn't one to let the competition have all the fun without proffering its own version of a technology. A fingerprint reader on the front makes more ergonomic sense to me than a back panel scanner like the one adorning the HTC One Max, though Samsung will want to steer clear of infringing on Apple's patents.

Pricing and availability
The wonderful thing about pricing pressure is that it keeps progressively more advanced phones in roughly the same range year after year. The Samsung Galaxy S4 costs between $600 and $700 unlocked, depending on where you live, $200 with carrier subsidies (here in the US), and even less on a special. The Galaxy S5 should follow suit.

We can also expect Samsung to follow suit in terms of getting the phone in buyers' hands relatively quickly, before buzz wears off, people change their minds, or newer phones steal Samsung's thunder. Look for the first Galaxy S5 to go on sale globally in March, a few weeks after the launch event. It'll then cascade into other markets.

No matter what happens, CNET will be on the ground in Barcelona, Spain, bringing you the blow-by-blow news of the Samsung Galaxy S5, and all other important news from Mobile World Congress.

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