Galaxy S4 Launch: Samsung‘s Time To Shed Copycat Tag

Samsung's latest flagship Galaxy smartphone goes on sale this week, as the South Korean giant seeks to cement its lead over faltering rival Apple in an increasingly saturated market.

The Galaxy S4, armed with eye motion control technology that will pause a video when the user looks away, comes with a faster chip and is thinner and lighter than the Galaxy S III.

Unveiled last month at New York's Radio City Music Hall, the touchscreen device goes on sale in South Korea on Friday and will roll out globally over the weekend.

The release of the Galaxy S4 comes as Samsung finds itself at something of a crossroads in a market that was once dominated by Apple's iPhone.

After years of following and refining the iPhone's pioneering innovations -- a strategy that resulted in bitter patent battles with Apple -- Samsung has dethroned its California-based rival to become the world's top smartphone maker.

With that title has come increasing pressure for Samsung to shed its copycat label and come up with its own game-changing innovations.

"Samsung has entered territory that it hasn't been in before, and sales of the S4 will show if can sustain its newfound status in the market," James Song, analyst at KDB Daewoo Securities, told AFP.

Recent smartphone launches have lost something of the glamour and excitement that surrounded the early iPhone releases, in part because they are seen as offering incremental technology upgrades rather than breaking new ground.

The S4's features include a high-definition, five-inch (12.7-centimeter) screen, enhanced picture-taking capabilities and the capacity to translate to and from nine languages.

Its release has been preceded by a massive promotional campaign -- from the glitzy launch in New York to lighting up the sails of Sydney's iconic opera house on Tuesday night with images shot by ordinary Australians.

Samsung -- the world's largest technology firm by value and also the top handset maker -- has boasted stellar sales growth, setting new records for operating profit in every single quarter of last year.

First quarter results, due on Friday, are expected to show a 53% surge in operating profit from a year ago to 8.7 trillion won ($7.7 billion), largely fuelled by smartphone sales.

Samsung is estimated to have shipped 65 million smartphones globally in the first three months of 2013, for a market share of around 30%, according to Taiwanese analyst firm DRAMeXchange.

Apple by contrast, reported on Tuesday that its quarterly profit had dipped for the first time in nearly a decade, with DRAMeXchange estimating its iPhone shipments at 37.5 million units for a 15.3% market share.

But Apple's iPhone commands a profit margin double that of Samsung's smartphone stable which holds a much wider range of devices for both low- and high-end buyers.

"Samsung still has a very long way to establish itself as a leader, not a chaser, considering it has never had a genius in innovation like Steve Jobs," said Song.

"But Jobs is no longer at Apple either and the company is struggling. That may help Samsung earn some time to come up with ways to become a market leader in every sense," he added.

JK Shin, the head of Samsung's mobile unit, said verdicts from global wireless operators to the Galaxy S4 had been "far more positive" than with previous models and predicted of a "good result" ahead.

More than 41 million units of the Galaxy SIII have been sold globally since its release last May, while the first and second editions racked up sales of 25 million and 40 million respectively.

Song said the S4 had the potential to reach the 80 million sales mark by taking advantage of Apple's recent problems with supply chain disruption.

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HP India Unveils World‘s Fastest Desktop Printer

PC maker Hewlett-Packard India unveiled its latest range of Officejet Pro X 500 series printers, which the company claims is the world's fastest desktop printer.

"HP's Officejet Pro X 500 series is recognised as the world's fastest desktop printer by Guinness World Records," HP Printing Systems PPS Director Nitin Hiranandani told reporters here.

Powered by HP PageWide Technology, the company said HP's Officejet Pro X Series can deliver professional documents at up to 70 pages per minute in General Office mode. They deliver high-quality documents at up to twice the speed and half the cost of colour lasers, he added.

The HP Officejet Pro X series and the HP Officejet Pro 3610/3620 Black and White series broaden the firm's Inkjet portfolio for businesses in India, he said.

"In 2012, India witnessed shipments of about 3 million printers as per IDC data, which included 1.2 million inkjet printers and 1.8 million laser printers. HP controls more than half of the market for both types of printers in India, he said."

HP Officejet Pro 3610/3620 Black and White series offers laser-like quality and performance at very low running costs, comparable to laser toner refills, he said.

"Enterprise workgroups and SMBs have told us they require technologies to improve efficiency and reduce costs and that's exactly what these devices do," Hiranandani added.

HP Officejet Pro X will address the needs of work-teams with up to 15 users printing up to about 4,200 pages a month and the users can also print from virtually anywhere with the latest mobile printing technologies such as HP ePrint.

HP Officejet Pro 3610 Black and White uses up to 50 per cent less energy than mono lasers and saves up to 40 per cent energy with the schedule-on and schedule-off feature. They come with a 2-inch mono graphic display and can print at ISO speed up to 19 pages per minute.

The HP Officejet Pro X Series is priced in the range of Rs 31,499-50,499, while the Officejet Pro Black & White series is priced in the range of Rs 7,999-11,999.

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Sony Xperia Z to hit Indian Stores On 12 March 2013

Sony has announced the Xperia Z and Xperia ZL for India today. The Xperia Z will be available in stores from March 12 onwards and is priced at Rs 38,990. Both phones will ship with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and are already up for pre-order on certain online stores. The two phones will be part of a staggered flagship strategy for the company in India, with the Xperia ZL arriving in stores later this month.

Both phones share many specifications, but we will start with a look at the Xperia Z. One of the biggest selling points for the Xperia Z is its water-proof and dust-proof body. The phone is IP57 certified, which means you can immerse it in up to 1 metre of water for 30 minutes. Despite this rugged heritage, the Xperia Z is incredibly slim at 7.9mm and also features a microSD card slot. Naturally, the back of the Xperia Z is non-removable.

The Z is powered by a Snapdragon S4 Pro SoC, which has four Krait cores ticking at 1.5GHz each. The phone has an Adreno 320 GPU for graphics and 2GB of RAM. All that coupled with Jelly Bean should ensure a very smooth performance. The display on the Xperia Z is said to be a stunner. The 5-inch LCD panel beams out 1920 x 1080 pixels natively, while Sony’s proprietary Mobile Bravia Engine 2 enhances image quality and colour reproduction.

Here's a promo for the Xperia Z, which shows the thinking and engineering that went into designing the phone.

The resolution and the screen size of the phone result in a pixel density of 441 pixels per inch. The display is protected by shatter-proof and scratch-resistant glass. Sony has also baked in niceties like an OptiContrast panel, which is normally reserved for their higher-end Bravia televisions. The technology improves image clarity and boosts the display's contrast ratio while minimising reflections.

The camera on the back is a 13-megapixel one with support for 1080p and HDR video recording. Of course, all of Sony’s camera bangs and whistles like image stabilisation, face detection and 3D Sweep Panorama are present.

Here’s a look at the key specs of the Xperia Z
5-inch TFT LCD with a 1920 x 1080p resolution, 441 PPI

LTE, Cat3, up to 100 Mbps DL, HSPA+, GPRS/EDGE

Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspotGPS with A-GPS support

Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP

GPS with A-GPS support and GLONASS

NFC

13-megapixel camera with HDR video recording, image stabilisation, Sony 3D Sweep Panorama; 2-megapixel front-facing camera with 1080p video recording

16 GB internal storage with microSD card slot

The Xperia Z has a non-removable 2330 mAh battery. Sony’s proprietary Stamina Mode technology should help in increasing battery life by throttling data-hogging apps when in standby mode.

Both the Xperia Z and the ZL will feature some exclusive Sony apps. The company has bundled in a subscription to the new Sony Jive music streaming service, as well as Sony LIV, a video streaming service featuring exclusive Indian content. The Jive service is free for the first six months and users can then opt to subscribe to it after the initial free period.

Here's a quick look at the phone

The Xperia ZL has the same display and processor as its big brother, but loses the water and dust-resilient body. Instead, Sony has managed to fit the 5-inch display in a body smaller than the Galaxy S3. The ZL has a small flap at the back, which houses the SIM and the microSD card slots. The back panel itself is non-removable and houses a 2370 mAh battery, slightly bigger than the Xperia Z.

Another unique design feature is the placement of the front-facing camera, which is housed below the display. The camera on the Xperia ZL is the same 13-megapixel unit as in the Xperia Z and has the same features, including the HDR video mode. The ZL also has an IR blaster and one-touch mirroring features, something that the Xperia Z gives a miss. One other neat inclusion is dual-band Wi-Fi support to play nicely with the 5GHz wireless band.

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Google Panda Update Scheduled March 15th, 2013

Matt Cutts, Distinguished Engineer at Google, announced yet another Panda update is scheduled to hit on Friday March 15th, 2013, or Monday March 18th 2013. This would be the 25th Panda roll out since February 2011. In addition, Matt mentioned that Google will launch is 4th major Penguin update this year, stating that it will be significant enough to cause major discussions.

Matt also confirmed that Google targeted another link network a couple weeks ago, and says they will release another one within the next week or two.

Wondering when next Google panda update is going to rolled out ? Well guys its very near and you should start wondering what effects this new Google panda update going to put on your websites and all SEO work you have done till now.  According to news In SMX West panel, Matt Cutts head of web spam announced that the team of Google web spam working hard to provide best search results. To keep filtering process going on between bad and good websites, most probably a Google Panda update is going to take place on Friday 15 March 2013 or Monday 18 March 2013.

If this Google panda update rolled out on these given dates than this will be official Google algorithm panda update #25. The last official Google panda update #24 was rolled out in early January on 22nd January 2013. In #24 Google panda update, it has affected almost 1.2 % of English Search queries and we can see same kind of affected English search queries in this coming latest Google panda update on 15 March 2013 or 18 March 2013.

Lets wait and watch what Google is going to do in coming days with its algorithm updates. We hope this time Google will filter the results by keeping original Google panda filtering system, as in last couple of Google algorithm updates specially the Google panda updates did not come out with the best results. We have seen that after Google panda update the bad content or no content website take place top spots in Google search results and Good quality websites having good page rank loose their rankings in Google SERP results.

Will confirm you guys as Google makes an official statement for this Google panda update #25, if it takes place on given dates. Till than just keep an eye on your search engine rankings and keep your website updating with some great and quality stuff.

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