Samsung VS Apple

   Three models of Samsung Galaxy smartphones will be banned from sale in europe. The court in The Hague has ordered the injunction.
   From mid-October, it'll be impossible to obtain the Galaxy S, the Galaxy S II, and the Galaxy Ace in europe, says Saskia Panchoe, spokesman for the Dutch court in The Hague. Apple asked the court for interim measures to prohibit the sale of these models, and three Samsung tablets due to a violation of its patents.
   "The court found that there was much offense for the phones, but not for the tablets, which may be sold." said Saskia Pancho.
   The offences are related to the EP 2059868 in connection with how to scroll through the images or unlock the cell phone.
   "Patents are generally valid for several countries, which means that the prohibition applies to all countries where the patents are valid" said the court. The countries concerned should be in addition to the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany, Finland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Sweden and Switzerland. This injunction is valid until the case is judged on its merits, and it will not be before 2012. Many referrals are also underway on other models in the Samsung.
   Since April these two companies are at open court war, accusing each other of violating their patents. Recently, Samsung has even argued that the principle of tablet was not invented by Apple, but Stanley Kubrick's film 2001, A Space Odyssey. 

IBM aims to create "cognitive computers"

   U.S. computer group IBM announced, Thursday, Aug. 18, to have developed a chip duplicating the human brain function, which can be used to build computers capable of learning from their own experience.
   The "cognitive computers" built with these chips are not programmed the same way today's traditional computers are. These computers, instead, learn from their experiences, find correlations, develop assumptions, remember - and learn - results, thus imitating the plasticity of the human brain, IBM promises.
   Two prototype chips have been manufactured and are being tested, said the American group. Both were burned with an ultimate line of 45 nanometers on silicon on insulator, and contain the equivalent of 256 "neurons".
   IBM is testing two types of architectures for these chips: one with 262,144 synapses (zone of interaction between nerve cells) programmable, the other with 65,536 synapses for learning. The long term goal of IBM is to build a complex component which contains 10 million "neurons" but it's still very far from the human brain, which includes 100 billion. The goal is to get at creating 100,000 billion synapses in a space less than 2 liters, while using one kilowatt of electricity, said the American group.
   In terms of applications ,a "cognitive"computer is for example capable of triggering a tsunami alert by analyzing data from different types of marine sensors, compiling data on temperature, pressure and wave height, explains IBM. It could also help retailers manage their inventories fresh products through its sense of "smell".
   For the second phase of the project, called Synapse, IBM has enlisted the help of several renowned universities such as Columbia, Cornell, the University of California and that of Wisconsin. The project also benefits from a funding of $ 21 million (14.6 million) from Darpa, the agency that funds high-tech projects in the field of defense.
   IBM has already designed Watson, a computer with the ability to learn from mistakes, and a surge capacity of semantic analysis which makes it much more effective than traditional software in the association of ideas.

  Source: lemonde.fr

Large decrease in computer sales

   According to figures published by Gartner, PC sales have decreased by 19% between the second trimester of 2010 and the second trimester of 2011, including a 17.8% decrease only in france. Which means a decrease of 2.8 million units sold.
   Are Tablets to be blamed ?
   The decrease could be caused by the economic climate, aswell as the competition from touch pads(chich is not included in the study of Gartner) and to a lesser extent, smartphones. As for manufacturers, almost all of them show decreasing sales in the French market: HP -9%, -13% for Dell, -23% for Asus, and  to -40% for Acer. Apple pulls one out of the game, with sales rising by 6.4%.
   Aware that the development of touch pads is one of the causes for poor sales of laptop computers (-20.4% year on year), the different manufacturers should continue to release new tablet models in the weeks or months ahead.  They should also focus, like Dell, on products and services with high added value (computer services, data security, or cloud computing).

Phone that supports Windows 7

   Fujitsu is launching a new and unique smart phone today in japan, Known as the Fujitsu F-07C, the device works as a symbian standart phone but can switch to windows 7 mode with the touch of a button. Yes, it's a phone and a computer at the same time ! The pricing, however, will not be announced untill the device goes on sale through NTT DoCoMo. But, since the phone has some high-end hardware, it will probably cost a lot more that even the most expencive smart phones available today.
    If the price of the device doesnt convince you to buy it, maybe the fact that it cant make it up to two hours of runtime on windows mode will. Not a very persuasive reason, but we have got to admit that this is as far as a mobile phone ca go. And even so Fujitsu could get better focusing on a mass-market product rather than the small-market this phone will surely find.
   After all, using windows, a desktop operating system on a 4-inch, 1024×600 mobile device screen will be really frustrating except for the most patient. Because for mobile use, Windows phone 7 is enjoyable, but Windows, not so much without a keyboard and mouse.
   There is an issue though, Intel’s 1.2 GHz Atom Z600 chip will only run at 600 MHz in the F-07C, which will reduce the performance of the phone's windows mode. The chip could probably be boosted to run at full speed, but that will drastically reduce the battery's runtime. And once you end up using all of the battery's runtime you'll be stuck with neither a mini-computer or a mobile phone.
   The concept of a full computer in your pocket sounds cool, but between cons and pro the fate of this computer-phone seems unpredictable. So all we can do for now is sit and watch where it goes.

Samsung features a pliable screen

   Many companies today orient their research on flexible and rollable screens, but Samsung just introduced it's pliable screen. The presented prototype consists of two displays of the type AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) protected by a glass slide and attached by a hinge.
    Until today, the double-screens were always consisting on separation at the center, as a plastic hinge separated the two screens. The advantage of this model lies in the fact that this plastic has been replaced by a hyperelastic material silicone rubber, giving the illusion of the continuity of a single screen.
   One half of the screen is built into that material and the other adheres to the surfaces of the hinge, the whole being covered with a touchpad. The curvature has a radius of 1 mm, so that whether the screen is folded or unfolded, it is almost perfectly flat.

   The screen was tested by closing and opening it 100 000 times, there were no signs of wear or cracks detected, but the brightness at the center was decreased by 6%, and the Korean company announced that this device has a lifetime of aproximately 5 years. If no comercialization is expected to date (the cost of the flexible AMOLED remaining prohibitive) the prototype has the technical possibilities that could emerge in the coming years.

Baidu's new web browser

   In my last review I introduced to you the Chinese conquest of the internet. And while at it I figured I could offer you, today, some very recent news about the Chinese search engine Baidu.
   The group of the Chinese search engine Baidu launches into the battle of web browsers, as it released, in beta, for Windows operating systems,  a new web browser similar to Google Chrome.
   So the users can, for example, download extensions and customize the software from the homepage and they can access the search engine Baidu directly from the navigation bar. Even regarding it's similarities with Chrome, Baidu web browser also holds some similarities with internet explorer.
   By engaging in the area of ​​Web browsing, Baidu intends to strengthen its presence in the Chinese market. The last census of the Chinese authorities reported 485 million Internet users in the country. With this service, Baidu may also diversify and seek new growth opportunities. Baidu already represents almost 76% of the search market in China, against 19% for Google, according to Analysys International, a research firm in Beijing.
   Baidu will, however, find it difficult to expand in the area of ​​Web browsing in China, largely dominated by lnternet Explorer. According to the statistics of StatCounter, Internet Explorer represents over 86% of the market share of the country and Chrome, second, is just over 5%.
   If Baidu poses as the competitor of the American group of web browsing, it would not be the case in the search area on the internet. Baidu announced at the beginning of July reaching an agreement with Microsoft, which will allow users to directly obtain results generated by the search engine Bing in english.

China's conquest of the Internet

   China is a country very known for it's high population and it's évolution in economy and politics. It is also a special case regarding Internet.
   In fact, in 30 June 2010, China announced having 420 million internet users, and in just a year after the number grew amazingly to reach 485 million users. But what's more interesting is the websites and services used by the chinese internet users.
   We are all used to global or continental services like: Google, Spotify, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter,Skype, Google+, ...etc. But in China, just like Russia, Korea and Japan, many services are country specific. And some are sky high !! I'll introduce some of those services to you:

•    Weibo: A micro-Blogging service similar to Twitter, and even more evolved, now it has nearly 200 million users. Twitter has recently reached 175 million users.

          However there are 2 major differences between Twitter and Weibo:
          Twitter is used worldwide, Weibo is exclusively used in China, the first was launched in 2006, and the second was launched only 2 years ago. In the last 6 months, the users of Weibo increased from 63.1 million to 195 million !!

•  Baidu, the Chinese Google: 

          In addition to Weibo, there is of course the search engine Baidu. It is used by over 70% of the chinese internet users, way ahead of Google and Bing ! Baidu has even paid the luxury of increasing it's market shares in the recent years, and it's aiming for the international with Bing exactly.

• QQ, the Chinese ultimate phenomenon:

          QQ is the Chinese messaging system made in Tencent, used by almost all Chinese internet users. According to the Tencent website, it's users in 31 March 2011 was 674.3 million, making it the second most used service in the internet after Facebook.

• Baidu and Tencent are worth more that Yahoo! and eBay:

          The importance of the group Tencen in the Chinese stock market is valued at 831 billion Yoan, or about 60 billion US dollar. This makes it the third company in the world in Web listing, behind Google (194 billion) and Amazon (98 billion), and way ahead of companies like Yahoo (19 billion) and eBay (44 billion). Baidu is ahead of those two American giants aswell, with a rating of 53 billion dollars.
          The rate of internet users in the Chinese population is only 36%, which gives Tencent, Baidu and Weibo a very important potential of growth only in China! And sooner or later, these companies will have international ambitions, so beware !