Samsung wows investors with futuristic tech that Apple's iPhone is already delivering

Apple Insider ^ | November 20, 2015 | Daniel Eran Dilger

[Swordmaker]

Speaking at Samsung Electronics' 2015 Investors Forum, a series of company executives spent hours saying very little, while talking about "innovations" such as phase detection Focus Pixels and camera sensor Deep Trench Isolation that iPhones already have.

Source: Samsung

Samsung will "lead by following" Apple Watch

Samsung LSI marketing team head Kyushu Hong spoke at length about "Innovation for the next mobile experience," outlining plans to introduce a "Bio Processor" chip that packed a series of components related to health related data recording.

Source: Samsung

Asked when the new chip would be introduced and when Samsung expected it to become a meaningful revenue generator, Hong stated that it was expected to ship early next year and might be used in some kind of band or other product focusing on activity, not necessarily from Samsung.

Source: Samsung

Source: Samsung

And while his presentation discussed "wearable device trend" and the potential of wearables to grow dramatically in shipment volumes, there was no discussion of how Samsung was actually performing in the smartwatch category it largely introduced, before partnering with Google on Android Wear and then going solo with its own Tizen-based Gear watches, all without achieving any success along the way, before being steamrolled by the arrival of Apple Watch.

At the same time, the "trends" Samsung identified for wearable devices included authentication and payment, features Samsung's Galaxy Gear models continue to lack. Apple Watch introduced Apple Pay last fall, but the company's own new "Samsung Pay" is a feature still confined to Samsung's phones.

The primary unique "feature" Samsung added to its watches that Apple didn't was a small, low quality 1.9 MP camera, which gave it a creepy voyeur-vibe reminiscent of Google Glass while failing to capture images of any useful quality.

Samsung's Galaxy Gear lineup hasn't attract many buyers. Instead, the watch ended up with Best Buy seeing more than 30 percent of its sales being returned by unsatisfied customers, according to a report by Ars.

Samsung unveils some existing camera technology

Focusing next on photography as a feature of smartphones, Hong introduced "fast and accurate auto focus" using phase detection. Apple calls this "Focus Pixels," and introduced it last year as a feature of iPhone 6 (using sensors developed by Sony). While much attention is devoted to imaging how Apple's innovations and technologies will be commodified by Android, the reverse actually seems to be happening

Samsung had earlier introduced phase detection autofocus in its Galaxy S5, but its speed to market didn't change the fact that the S5 was outsold by Apple's iPhone 5s models without the feature. iPhone 6, with Focus Pixels of its own, further trounced the Galaxy S6.

While much attention is devoted to imagining how Apple's innovations and technologies will be commodified by Android licensees, the reverse actually seems to be happening: any technical advantage introduced by others is eventually adopted by Apple (examples include LTE, NFC and barometers), while Apple's technical leaps remain largely unmatched by rivals (such as Touch ID, Continuity and 3D Touch).

Source: Samsung

Source: Samsung

Other "futuristic" ideas the company addressed included using multiple exposures composited to achieve wide dynamic range and "ISOCELL technology" that puts a barrier between pixels to increase light sensitivity and effectively "controls the absorption of electrons."

Source: Samsung

If that sounds familiar, it's because Apple introduced the concept as "deep trench isolation," in explaining its efforts to increase the pixel count within the iPhone 6s camera sensor without also increasing the noise commonly experienced as pixels get smaller as they are packed more densely to increase overall resolution.

Samsung rushed high resolution camera sensors to market before Apple, but their high megapixel counts didn't result in better photos. Instead, it resulted in low light noise and less accurate color reproduction.

While Apple explained that it was using this new technology to increase iPhone camera resolution without losing quality, Samsung stated that its goal for the same process (under a different name) was to reduce pixel size in order to help reduce the overall thickness of its phones.

Source: Samsung

Samsung stated it was reducing the pixel size of its 16MP sensor from 1.12um to 1.0um to achieve 1mm of reduced thickness. Apple reduced the pixel size of iPhone 6 from 8MP at 1.5um to 12MP at 1.22um, not primarily to reduce device thickness, but to increase photo and video capture resolution without losing quality, maintaining larger pixels than competing sensors. Pixel size reduction on its own simply makes each pixel less sensitive to light.

It's noteworthy that while Apple uses a custom version of Sony's camera sensor for iPhone 6/6s, Samsung also uses Sony's IMX240 sensor in its Galaxy S6/S6 Edge, at least in the versions it sends to reviewers. Regular users are finding that Samsung might also swap in its own ISOCELL camera sensors to save money, resulting in reduced image quality.

This all happened before

Overall, Samsung's investor conference seemed far less ambitious and confident as its event from 2013, where JK Shin, Samsung's president and chief executive of IT & Mobile, promised that the company would "play a key role in the premium smartphone market."

As AppleInsider noted at the time, this was a direct contradiction of the warning Samsung had earlier given its investors of slowing profits.

It also belied the reality that most of the phones Samsung had been—and was currently selling—were low end devices, not premium phones. Further, Samsung has been—and continues to repeatedly note—that its premium sales remain static (rather than experiencing any tremendous growth in demand as promised) and that its unit growth is coming from low end devices, which are eroding its Average Selling Price.

Source: Samsung

Back in 2013, Samsung focused upon screen resolutions, forecasting that by this year, it would be selling smartphones with 3840x2160 displays. Instead of that happening, the company is still selling "WQHD" screens, and even those are plaguing Samsung's high end devices with excessive screen resolutions that its relatively anemic Application Processors aren't quite capable of driving competitively.

Source: Samsung

In 2013, Samsung also laid out a plan for delivering 64-bit cores just like Apple had in its A7, but then actually spent two years trying to catch up.

Based on the company's still-vapor promises regarding the performance of its Exynos 8, it will remain slower at real world tasks than the A9 chip Apple has already sold by the millions in its iPhone 6s phones.

[SamAdams76]

I own an iPhone. It’s more expensive and far more superior to a Samsung Android.

[Swordmaker]

BTW, didn’t Apple also invent high-definition screes, 4k screens?

Actually, the iMac was 5K, not 4K. . . and they sold the entire computer for the price of just a 5K MONITOR in the PC world. Get your snark right, Adorno.

Apple was also the first smartphone maker to introduce larger screens t(o) the smartphone space.

Please show me any smartphone in 2007 that had larger multi-touch screen than the 3.5" screen on the revolutionary Apple iPhone. Please.

They were also first with fingerprint ID

How about the FIRST that actually worked as an ID system, Adorno? I have a friend who had the Motorola with the fingerprint sensor. She had gone through all the trouble of training the sensor to her fingerprint. Nine times out of ten, it would not recognize her fingerprint to unlock the phone. . . but every time I tried it with MY thumb, which was NOT trained to me, it unlocked and opened the phone for me. Every time. So much for its usefulness as a security device. Apple's works and is not capable of being spoofed because it does not actually use the fingerprint. . . reading instead the ridges and valleys in the fat pads beneath the skin of the fingertip. The few claims of people who say they have been able to get it to use a "fingerprint" copy were actually reading their OWN finger ridges below the copy on their own iPhones, and their methods failed attempts at duplication by others or when used on an iPhone not owned by the tester.

I hear Apple will also be inventing the driverless cars, and the infotainment systems in cars.

Apple's CarPlay is already contracted to over 40 automobile makers and is installed in quite a few 2015 and 2016 car models using SIRI voice activation including Honda, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and Ferrari (starting in 2014 with the Ferrari FF). Sorry, you are late with this snark. I drove a rental car with CarPlay installed a week ago. Excellent.

[nomad]

I use COMPUTERS to surf and stream video, my phone is a basic adjunct to my two laptops, desktop tower with plasma big screen display, my Lenovo all in one and SAMSUNG tab, WHAT THE HELL DO I NEED TO SPEND TONS OF MONEY ON AN IPHONE FOR!?!

[nomad]

I buy phones cash outright, never buried in my bill. Now computers, I MAY use credit.

[nomad]

I do have a BestBuy card, but lets just say my college aged girls get more use out of it than I do!

[SamAdams76]

Sounds like you are spending way more money then I am!

[nomad]

I`ve been off cable for five years now and never regretted one minute. One of my laptops is about six years old, the desktop with tower and plasma screen is four, the second laptop and tab are about one and a half and the Lenovo is going one one year old. I take care of my stuff so it lasts.

[Swordmaker]

Hey! That's the same shape as an iPhone, Apple will sue in 3..2..1

Federal Circuit (Court) denies Samsung petition for rehearing in Apple case: next stop Supreme Court?

So far, Samsung has lost in every court on that claim. . . Apple did not sue based on the shape, they sued on the trade dress and Samsung DID infringe the design patents, even copying the charger, the cords, the box, and even the advertising. There was a 125 page internal memo from Samsung management to their design engineers explicitly telling them HOW they wanted each thing to look like and work like an iPhone. Smoking gun evidence. Hard to refute when the management kept telling their engineers to copy the competition.

For example, these 30 pin cables from the first Samsung Galaxy S:

And the box from the iPhone 4 and the Galaxy S:

And the charging brick from the Samsung Galaxy S compared to Apple's Design:

Samsung copied so much. . . as for all cellular phones and design, consider this collage of Cellular phones before iPhone and after iPhone and use your head for something other than to keep your ears apart:

Cellular phone design before the introduction of the iPhone in January 2007,
then phone designs after the iPhone introduction

[Chgogal]

FYI

http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/20/technology/apple-pencil-shortage/

[Swordmaker]

FYI

Saw it, expected it.

[Mastador1]

Don’t be so serious, I was talking about the Baking sheet with the sign on it. ;^ )

[Swordmaker]

Don't be so serious, I was talking about the Baking sheet with the sign on it. ;^ )

Would you believe I once collected antique Winchester Rifles. . . and I ran across a Winchester spatula? Seriously. Had the Winchester logo on the blade. I couldn't let it go, so I bought it for $75.

Unfortunately my ex-wife found it on my desk one day, wondered what her spatula was doing on my desk, didn't notice it was anything except a spatula, picked it up, and took it to the kitchen and used it to ice a cake, and then when she saw she had two spatulas, tossed my very rare Winchester spatula into the "Donate to Goodwill" box!

I haven't seen it, or another one like it since. . . . Grrrrrrr!

[dila813]

There are better Android phones than Samsung, there are Android phones that can run circles around Samsung and Apple.

Samsung is like the Chevy of Phones, Apple is like a Mercedes, but Android has 100s of manufactures out there.

There are phones with dual sides, flexible, hardened, screens on the side, etc.... out there ... and even more specialty phones for specific activities

Both Apple and Samsung steal these ideas from the larger specialty phone market then improve on them for the larger market place. They are both “Me Too” phone companies.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

[SunkenCiv]

Bringing processor design into the company a few years back added that last piece of the puzzle. I'm reminded of a quote from the car business, from the late Carroll Shelby -- "there's no substitute for cubic inches."

[Swordmaker]

Trust you to trot out Slice Intelligence's long debunked chart based on self-selected users who had to load Slice's app and agree to post photos of their RECEIPTS of everything they bought online to a third party company. This claim did not last the week in which it was reported.

Their data only covered those people who were in the United States, had downloaded Slice's app, and had religiously scanned their receipts. . . and they conflated pre-orders with actual sales. It excluded all foreign sales in 10 other nations including China (their app was not available outside the US) where 67% of Apple Watch sales occurred, the Slice app required people to scan a physical receipt received from a store. Apple sends email receipts which are unlikely to be printed out by anyone, so few were actually scanned, and finally, on May 26th, Apple Watches went on sale at all Apple retail stores . . . and opened in 25 other countries and also those were being sold in the Apple Retail stores. In other words, Okie, As of May 26th, customers no longer had to order Apple Watches online, but Slice Intelligence, unintelligently, interpreted their online sales data to be 1) universal, and 2) ignored the fact that customers preferred to go to an Apple Retail Store and select an Apple Watch in person and buy direct, and 3) a sign of a drastic drop in overall sales of the Apple Watch. The logic of Slice's chart defied all other companies tracking Apple Watch sales because Slice only looked at ONLINE SALES, only at US sales ignoring the rest of the world with a multi-national company, and as a result they were laughed at.

Slice has very little credibility, being a startup using a limited, unproven means of measuring sales, because it requires a self-selected reporting base. . . and used an unproved algorithm that with this report proved woefully lacking in accuracy.

But, let's grant Slice's chart figures for May of 20,000 per day. Remember these are US sales only. That's 620,000 watches sold in the United States which represent approximately 34% of the worldwide sales figure. Calculating that we find that means that Apple sold 1.8 MILLION Apple Watches in May. At a $500 average selling price, just in May alone, Apple's revenue was almost $900 million. During the 20 days that the Apple Watch was available in April for sales, it is obvious it averaged above 20k, so let's just use that as a number. That's 400,000 in April, for revenue of $200 million. June is unknowable, but those companies such as Gartner and Canacord who, unlike Slice intelligence, DO track international, online and brick and mortar store sales, claim Apple sold over 3.5 MILLION Apple Watches for that quarter. At the $500 ASP, that's $1.750 BILLION in Revenue. Strange, that is almost exactly the $1.8 BILLION that Apple increased their "Other" category on their quarterly report in their Financials for that quarter. Oops, all of that shows YOU ARE WRONG!

[Swordmaker]

That's 400,000 in April, for revenue of $200 million. <

Oops, forgot to adjust for the rest of the world's sales. That makes April approximately 1.175 million Apple Watches sold, then at $500 ASP, OR $550 million in revenue.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

I’m not saying they aren’t making money. Someone has to fund the Democrats, Jihadist movement, Abortion, and Global Warming scares.

[Swordmaker]

I'm not saying they aren't making money. Someone has to fund the Democrats, Jihadist movement, Abortion, and Global Warming scares.

Whoo boy, are you escalating your lies and delusion now. The only thing you will find Apple, as a company, involved in is LGBT, because of Tim Cook, and climate, because they make their product as recyclable as possible and their facilities as independent of the electrical grid as possible, which actually makes Apple a profit.

My point was NOT that Apple Watches were making money, but that your claim that they were not selling was total BUNK and a lie. You don't do it well. . . a lie to be even partially believable needs to be based somewhat in truth. I presented facts and you go back and again show an outlying report that has been repeatedly debunked, including here on FreeRepublic DIRECTLY TO YOU (which I know because I presented you with the facts from authoritative sources including links before), to continue with your lying claims because of your delusional hatred for Apple.

If you want to look to see who is funding Abortion, look to Microsoft. For funding Democrats, look to Google and Amazon. For the Jihadist movement, unfortunately, look to our own government. To claim that Apple funds the Jihadist movement is beyond the pale. . . and shows you are totally delusional.

[adorno]

Please show me any smartphone in 2007 that had larger multi-touch screen than the 3.5" screen on the revolutionary Apple iPhone. Please.

Wow! You had to go back to the original iPhone to try to reply to my point, BUT!!!!, the point was/is that, Apple was late to the larger than 4 inch screens that Samsung and Microsoft and others had been doing for about 2-3 years before Apple noticed that, people were actually buying those bigger screens devices in huge quantities. Heck, Apple was even against the idea of bigger than 4 inch screens a couple of years ago.

Apple Car Play? And Siri?

Well, fined and dandy, but, while there may be a bunch of car models that can be equipped with Car Play, chances are that, the vast majority of purchases of those cars will choose not to get Car Play, since, it would be very limited by Apple's intervention and control of the technology. Also, Apple's share of the smartphone market, while significant, is lower than Android/Samsung/Google. Why limit yourself when you can get a better and more significant infotainment system from Google and others?

Then, Siri? Are you effing kidding me? When the much better voice assistants are made by Google and Microsoft, why settle for third best? Heck, I doubt anybody would make the decision to go with a car that has Siri inside, if they were to first get a taste of Cortana or Google Now?

And, why also settle for third best when there are much better mapping apps from Google or Microsoft?

When it comes ultra-high-definition screens, well, they were around for a bunch of years before Apple decided to include them in one of the Mac computers. Fact is that, there were others that considered adding 4k screens with their PCs, but felt that it was overkill for most applications and for most people. It still is overkill, since, there aren't many apps or applications that can take advantage of that kind of resolution. It was mostly gimmicky and a way to create a refresh-cycle for their iMacs.

When it comes to fingerprint ID, well, my point still stands, that,Apple didn't invent it. It was another gimmick after it proved to not a bit problematic in the first iteration of the tech in their iPhones.

I don't fault Apple for not being first in most innovations that they later do put to use. They do like to wait for tech to first be proven in other devices, before Apple implements them in Apple tech.

Oh, I forgot to give them credit for one of the greatest 'innovations'; ever, perhaps even bigger than the invention of the wheel, and that's the idea of 'round corners' for their iPhones.

Yup! Apple, the greatest 'innovator' of ideas or inventions that were previously existing.