Tag: LG

IGEL gives up on thin clients

Thin client player IGEL has told its partners and customers that it is giving up making thin client hardware in March next year and will move to software offerings and hardware from its partners.

The company said that its chums Lenovo, HP and LG will give partners access to nine different thin client offerings and the firm has also developed partnerships with software players, including Microsoft, Citrix and VMware too.

Simon Townsend, IGEL’s field chief technology officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), said it had kept partners in the loop as it had been winding down its hardware operation so the development would not come as a surprise to its channel.

LG and Ricoh make pact for European partnership

LG and Ricoh have formed a  European partnership that will give businesses access to the tech giant’s range of display devices through a single trusted partner.

Effective from 1 April, companies of all sizes and across all sectors will have access to LG technology through Ricoh’s Communications Services portfolio, including market-leading products such as LG’s UHD IPS displays.

OLED gets Korean government boost

SONY DSCLG is closely collaborating with the Korean government to promote local manufacturing of OLED displays in a move which could see the cost of the technology fall.

LG announced yesterday that it was investing $10 billion in its flexible OLED and big-screen TV manufacturing and hoped to create an ‘OLED Value Chain’ to lower the currently high price of OLED displays.

OLED TVs are only produced by LG because of that manufacturing cost, is so high it makes the incredible image quality too expensive.

However the Korean government is concerned that South Korea’s decades-long leadership in displays is being challenged by the rapid rise of Chinese companies,

LG Display’s CEO, Han Sang-beom, told delegates at an event in Paju that industry growth was flattening. Threats from China are urging the country to find something new.

“I believe OLEDs are the right solution to help the country lead its rivals in the battle for next-generation displays,” he said.

The Korean government has identified OLED as a key export item for the country and the Korean trade ministry is set to provide serious tax incentives when purchasing equipment for OLED production from local suppliers.

LG believes this expansion in OLED manufacturing will create hundreds of thousands of jobs and provide around $35bn worth of production.

Korean trade minister, Yoon Sang-jick said that the Korean government will be active in providing more supportive measures to help the country maintain continued leadership in the global display industry even in OLEDs.

Samsung and LG call off war of the washing machines

washing machine warSamsung and LG have called off a daft and expensive legal war which was sparked by a set of damaged washing machines.

The two companies said in a joint statement they would withdraw all complaints against each other and ask legal authorities to refrain from meting out harsh punishments in cases going on.

LG appliances chief Jo Seong-jin was indicted by Seoul prosecutors on a charge of deliberately damaging Samsung washing machines at a retail store in Germany last September. Samsung asked for a criminal punishment. Prosecutors have not declared what penalty they would seek against Jo.

The pair were creating much merriment as they argued over how many washers were damaged by Jo and other employees. LG published surveillance video footage to YouTube in an attempt to prove Jo’s innocence, and Samsung sent in its forensic teams to prove the video was heavily doctored.

“Both sides have agreed to avoid legal action and resolve any future conflicts or disputes through dialogue and mutual agreement,” the companies said.

It is not clear if this is the legal equivalent of agreeing to step outside or to have a dual between executives. We just hope that if there are duals that they are televised when Game of Thrones is finished.

The agreement extends to Samsung Display and LG Display. Samsung Display employees were indicted in February on charges of stealing organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display panel technology from LG Display. Samsung Display has said the technology was widely known in the industry and that the indictment was excessive.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ office declined to comment on the case against the LG Electronics appliances chief, and the Suwon District Prosecutors’ Office declined to comment regarding its case against the Samsung Display employees

If it did it would probably be something like “big multinational companies will be big multinational companies.”

Sound systems face wireless revolution

Screen Shot 2015-03-11 at 14.24.31Home audio systems are undergoing a sea change because of the popularity of mobile phones, according to a report from IHS Technology.

The analysts said that shipments of connected audio products – that includes wireless speakers, wireless sounders and connected AV receivers will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 88 percent.

In unit terms, that’s a rise from 1.5 million units in 2010 to close to 66 million units in 2016.

Paul Erickson, a senior analyst at IHS, said that its penetration of tablets and smartphones and streaming services including Spotify that are creating a shift in peoples’ perception.

“Consumers are seeking ways to wireless play audio from their mobile devices on speakers in the room they’re in, in multiple rooms in a household, and on speakers carried with the. This need will drive strong global growth in wi-fi and Bluetoosh connected speakers over the next few years,” he said.

Major players in the market will include Samsung, LG, Sony, Bose, Denon, and DTS.

And while prices for connected multi-room speakers are high, they will still be adopted by many people. Sony, Samsung and LG are all expected to put serious marketing bucks into the equation.

LG and Samsung make iWatch screens

Samsung HQ Silicon Valley - MM picLG Display and Samsung Electronics are to supply screens for Apple smartwatches when the shiny toy finally hits the shops.

The Electronic Times reported that LG Display will be the sole supplier of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens for the Apple watches that go on sale in April.

Samsung Display will also become a supplier for the next version of the smartwatch that is expected to go on sale either sometime in the second half of this year or early 2016.

No-one is confirming the rumour, but it makes sense and is probably true.

Apple has scheduled a special event on March 9, where it is expected to showcase Apple Watch. To have got this far in the production process, Jobs’ Mob should have sorted out its display supplier months ago.

The watch, which will let consumers check their email, pay for goods at retail stores and monitor personal health information, represents Apple’s only product introduction since the 2010 launch of the iPad.

The watch is likely to sell millions, but only because of the Apple logo. It has been shipped so late and with half of the promised healthcare enhancements dropped, because Jobs’ Mob could not get them to go.

LG fights to make OLED more mainstream

tvLG will partner with Chinese and Japanese firms in a bid to make organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display televisions more acceptable to the great unwashed.

LG has not said who it is teaming up with or what its OLED partnership would mean for those signing up to it.

So far, its affiliate LG Display is the only panel maker that can mass-produce OLED TV panels, and Samsung and LG are the biggest proponents of the technology for the TV market.

The LG companies say OLED offers better picture quality and consumes less power than mainstream liquid crystal displays (LCD).

However, they are still more expensive than LCD televisions. Quantum dot technology, which has many of the advantages of OLED but costs less, could also undercut OLED TV sales.

Some Chinese TV makers like Skyworth Digital Holdings and Konka are using OLED, but analysts say the technology needs to be more widely used by manufacturers to take off.

Samsung has said it has no plans to make OLED TVs in the immediate future because the technology is not yet ready for mass consumption.

Sony said it would be open to using OLED displays for its televisions but nothing appears to have happened yet.

War between LG and Samsung turns ugly

Newspaper Seller, 1939The competition between LG and Samsung appears to have taken an ugly turn with the arrest of a senior LG manager on a charge of deliberately damaging Samsung products.

An LG Electronics spokeswoman confirmed on Sunday that Jo Seong-jin and two other employees have been indicted by local prosecutors.

The impending court case continues a run of disputes between the cross-town rivals. The two companies compete on several fronts, including televisions and home appliances, and have quarrelled publicly.

Samsung filed an official complaint in September, accusing Jo and other LG employees of deliberately damaging Samsung washers at retail stores in Germany. The police investigated and found that it was all true.

LG had agreed to pay for what it called “accidental damage” to four machines after mediation by German authorities.  However it seemed that it couldn’t resist taking a pot shot at the quality of its rival’s products at the same time and Samsung lashed back at slanderous claims and filed an official complaint.

Ham Yoon-keun, a lawyer who will be defending Jo in court, said in a statement provided by LG said that it was questionable whether there is sufficient evidence to prove that the president of a global company deliberately destroyed the machines where employees of the competing company were present.

Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that representatives of Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics met recently in an unsuccessful attempt at mediation by prosecutors.

Meanwhile Samsung Display admitted that four of its employees were indicted on Friday on charges of stealing organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display panel technology from LG Display.

LG sniffed that the information is one of LG Display’s business secrets, Samsung Display’s such action should obviously be considered as a theft.

Samsung Display said the indictment was excessive, arguing that the technology in question was already widely known.

Samsung invests in new OLED plant

oldtvSamsung thinks that more people will be interested in buying its OLED TVs which spy on you and tell advertisers your doings.

The outfit has announced that it plans to write a cheque for $3.6 billion into making organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels.

A Samsung Display spokesman said that the new production line would mainly make medium and small-sized OLED displays for consumer electronics devices like smartphones and tablets. The investment would be made from 2015 to 2017.

The new line will initially produce curved panels like those on the Galaxy Note Edge, and eventually help win external customers which are becoming crucial to parent Samsung Electronics’ future earnings growth.

In addition to the planned OLED investment, Samsung is expected to start building a chip plant in South Korea sometime in the first half of the year. The company said in October that construction for this plant will be completed in the second half of 2017.

However it is likely that all this investment will cut back on Samsung’s total 2015 dividend payout and it is likely that share values will fall.

It is not the only one thinking of following this line. South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency said this morning that LG Display is adding capacity in an existing large-panel OLED production line.

 

 

LG might sue over fire breathing snapdragons

dragonLG is behaving oddly over moves by Qualcomm to fix overheating problems in its Snapdragon 810 chip.

Samsung told Qualcomm it would not use the chip for its Galaxy S6 model because of overheating problems and Qualcomm suggested it would make a few modifications.

However LG, which is also using the chip, appears outraged. Its initial response to Samsung’s statement was that the chip never overheated and there were no problems.  Now it is threatening to take legal action against Qualcomm if it modifies its latest Snapdragon 810 chip.

Its argument is that if Qualcomm modifies the Snapdragon 810, it means that the company admits the chipset has a flaw. Then it could trigger legal disputes, a spokesLG said.

So in other words – LG claims there is nothing wrong with the chip, but if Qualcomm admits there is something wrong with the chip then it will sue.

The question here is then why LG did not detect the Snapdragon’s fire breathing qualities.

It has been suggested that Qualcomm will provide a modified chipset to Samsung, something that Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics declined to confirm.

The Snapdragon 810 is designed as a 20-nanometer flagship mobile processor for top-tier smartphones.

The system on chip (SoC) integrates the fourth-generation long-term evolution advanced model (LTE-A), dubbed category 6, and theoretically supports up to 450 megabits-per-second data download speed.

But Samsung was worried that the chipset had a serious “throttling” problem that forcibly limits the graphic processing performance when it overheats, reports said.

Analysts said that a chipmaker could modify a new chip before mass production and Qualcomm may update it if its major client Samsung is uncomfortable with the overheating problem.

Qualcomm has said it will start mass-producing the Snapdragon 810 in the first half of the year.

For Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics is one of the most important partners, so the company is likely to show some reaction to the overheating issue.

 

 

 

LG denies it has a fire breathing Snapdragon

dragonWhile Samsung has pulled Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 from its new Galaxy S smartphone, because of overheating problems, another customer is denying there is anything wrong with it.

LG said it has encountered no overheating problems with Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and it will be powering a curved screen G Flex2 smartphone later this month.

Woo Ram-chan, LG vice president for mobile product planning, said that he was aware of the various concerns in the market about the (Snapdragon) 810, but the chip’s performance is quite satisfactory.

The comment came after Bloomberg reported a day earlier that Samsung Electronics, the world’s top smartphone maker, decided not to use the new Qualcomm processor for the next flagship Galaxy S smartphone after the chip overheated during testing. To be fair, Samsung and Qualcomm have declined to comment on the record about the reason for Samsung abandoning the chip.  Sources which cite overheating are so far unnamed.

Samsung is widely expected to unveil the new Galaxy S smartphone in early March, and Bloomberg reported that the Korean firm will use its own processors instead.

Woo said on Thursday that internal tests for the G Flex2, powered by the new Qualcomm processor, show that the new product emits less heat than other existing devices. The new phone is scheduled to start selling in South Korea on January 30.

He said he didn’t understand why there is a heat problem with the Galaxy S that his phone does not have.

 

LG presses on with OLED

oldtvWhile the rest of the display world abandons plans for OLED as too expensive for the big screen, LG is hanging on to the technology.

LG Display has announced it will increase production capacity of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels for TVs.

LG Display and its sister company, LG Electronics, claim OLED TV will give them a competitive edge over rivals once the technology matures.

LG Display said it would more than quadruple the monthly production capacity of OLED TV panels to 36,000 units by the year-end from 8,000 currently.

The companies say OLED is far superior to the mainstay liquid crystal display (LCD) technology, offering better picture quality as well as lower power consumption.

However it admits that costs, however, are much higher, making OLED TVs several times more expensive than LCD sets. LG Electronics’ 65-inch ultra-high-definition OLED TV launched in South Korea last year was priced at $10,874, more than three times the price of a comparable LCD TV by the same company.

Samsung has given up on OLED, saying the technology is not ready yet for mass consumption. It has focused on quantum dot technology instead.

LG Display finished building a $640.58 million factory to increase production of OLED TV panels. The panel maker did not comment on its investment plans for 2015.

It is not as if LG is betting the farm on OLED, it is also launching its own quantum dot TVs alongside OLED products this year in what it says is a two-track strategy.

Smartphone brands cleared by Taiwan’s watchdog

White Puppy-02Tawian’s watchdogs have cleared China’s Xiaomi and other smartphone brands of breaching data protection laws after national security concerns triggered a government probe.

The National Communications Commission said all the 12 brands it had tested, which also included handsets sold by Apple, Samsung, LG and Sony , did not violate the laws.

James Lou, an NCC official who was involved in the testing, said the commission, however, would request mobile phone makers make information transmission more secure.

The probe was started over concerns that the Chinese handset makers Huawei and ZTE were being used as snooping tools by the Chinese.

Taiwan is a bit sensitive to security matters involving China, which is its largest trading partner, but has never renounced the use of force to take back what it deems a renegade province.

Xiaomi, whose budget smartphones are popular throughout Asia, was previously accused of breaching data privacy. In August, the company said sorry and changed a default feature after a Finnish security company said Xiaomi collected address book data without users’ permission.

Taiwan’s government began performing independent tests on Xiaomi phones after media reports said that some models automatically send user data back to the firm’s servers in mainland China.

The probe was then widened to include local and foreign handsets. The NCC report said handsets made by HTC Corp, Asustek, Far EasTone, Taiwan Mobile and InFocus Corp, whose handsets are made by Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry were also cleared of breaching the data protection laws.

LG shows off 4K TV designs

lgscreensThe Consumer Electronics Show kicks off in Las Vegas next week and already vendors are seeking to hog the headlines by pre-announcing what they’ll be showing off.

Korean manufacturer LG said it it will show off a number of LED 4K Ultra HD TVs at the show that it will launch during 2015.

The TVs use different phosphor based LEDs and LG claims that gives better colour depth, more lifelike images, and a 25 percent increase in the colour range.

The TVs have 3840 x 2160 pixel resolution with something called inplane switching 4K panels which have the effect of allowing wider viewing angles.

LG will also show off an ultra thin Slim TV, while five of the products it will launch next year will include an ultra surround system, co-developed with Harmon/Kardon.

The company said it will also show off its smart TV software, webOS 2.0, which reduces boot time by up to 60 percent.

It will also show off an algorithm which renders SD, HD and full HD content into Ultra HD images.

Apple ruled Christmas

two-applesA report from Flurry indicated that Apple seriously outdid its competitors over the Christmas period.

The metrics company said that of all the devices activated in the week up to Christmas Day, Apple ruled the roost with 51 percent of device activations.

Samsung devices took second place with 17.7 percent of activations, Nokia took 5.8 percent, Sony took 1.6 percent and LG managed a measly 1.4 percent.

Microsoft owns Nokia now so it could be said to be third in the pecking order.

Flurry Analytics said the figures indicated that the introduction of Apple’s iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus had a “blockbuster” holiday season, beating the somewhat dismal gizmo trend.

Flurry also said that the largest number of app installs on Christmas Day, with 2.5 times the installs compared to any day in the previous three weeks.

The company also managed to track the type of device, with full size tablets taking 16 percent, small tablets 17 percent, “phablets” three percent, medium phones 58 percent and smalll phones seven percent.