[THE INVESTOR] While Samsung Electronics is busy with the upcoming launch of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, it is also preparing to showcase other big products, including the Gear S3, before the end of this year.The South Korean tech giant filed the trademark for Gear S3 Frontier at the nation’s patent office on July 26, implying that there could be more than one smartwatch model the firm has up its sleeves.The new project for Samsung smartwatch is reportedly named Solis, meaning the sun in Spani

[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Electronics has failed to make it to the list of top five smartphone-makers in China, despite having the largest global market share, falling behind local rivals and Apple. According to Strategic Analytics, a market research firm, Chinese handset makers, including Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi, were the top sellers in the April-June period. Samsung Galaxy S7.Huawei, China’s largest handset maker, topped the list with 19.1 million unit sales or 17.5 percent market share, fo

[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Electronics is expected to pour a whopping 17 trillion won (US$15 billion) into 3-D NAND flash memory chips and organic light-emitting diode panels, both key parts for smartphones, this year in a bid to widen the gap with its smaller rivals. The Korean tech giant had hinted it would invest about 26 trillion won this year, slightly up from last year’s 25.52 trillion won. In the first half of the year, it spent 8.8 trillion won. “We will focus on 3-D NAND and OLED this year

[THE INVESTOR] Samsung SDI, the battery arm of Samsung Group, posted operating loss of 54.2 billion won (US$48.13 million) in the second quarter, the company said in its quarterly earnings report on July 28. The company, however, narrowed its losses from 58.81 billion won a year earlier and 703.75 billion won from the previous quarter. Sales stood at 1.31 trillion won, up 11.95 percent on-year. In the April-June period, the net profit came to 955.8 billion won, reversing a loss of 310.3 billion

[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Electronics is pinning high hopes on its upcoming Galaxy Note 7 smartphone with a curved screen that will debut on Aug. 2 in New York, London and Rio de Janeiro. “Like its Galaxy S7 sibling that is receiving positive market reviews, the Galaxy Note 7 will meet market expectations,” a Samsung executive said in the firm’s second-quarter conference call on July 28. Together with its high-end flagship models, the company said its budget smartphones such as the Galaxy A, J and

[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Electronics said in its second-quarter conference call on July 28 that it would for the time being focus on rolling out 10-nanometer semiconductors rather than moving onto still-fledgling 7-nanometer chips. “The 10-nanometer chip production boasts the highest efficiency and is fit for commercialization,” an official from the tech giant said in the conference call held in the morning. Samsung Electronics’ 10-nano class DRAM chips.The company added that it is ready to produc

[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Electronics said on July 28 that sales of the curved-screen Galaxy S7 Edge made up more than 50 percent of its total flagship S7 sales in the April-June period. The Korean tech giant didn’t reveal the specific sales figure of the S7 phones during the conference call on the day. Industry watchers estimate a combined 270 million S7 and its Edge variant phones have been sold in the first half of this year since their March launch. Running on the upbeat mood, Samsung has also

[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Electronics said on July 28 it has shipped about 90 million handsets in the April-June period with smartphones making up more than 80 percent of the total. Samsung’s second-quarter smartphone shipments are estimated at about 72 million units, almost doubling its archrival Apple’s iPhone shipments of 40.4 million units during the same period.The Korean tech giant unveiled the sales figure in a conference call after announcing its second-quarter earnings earlier in the day.

[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Electronics said July 28 that its operating profit increased 18 percent on-year to 8.14 trillion won (US$7.19 billion) in the April-June period on the back of strong sales of the firm’s smartphones, the Galaxy S7 and its Edge variant in particular.Quarterly revenue increased 5 percent to 50.94 trillion won from a year earlier. Samsung’s IT & Mobile Communications division, in charge of the smartphone business, posted a whopping 4.32 trillion won operating profit, up from 2

[THE INVESTOR] The world’s memory sector is sizzling as more global chipmakers are vying to take the upper hand in the development of a more advanced vertical, or 3-D NAND flash memory chip.First mass-produced by Samsung Electronics in 2013, the 3-D NAND memory, which stacks cells vertically inside for the sake of space efficiency, has gone through a technical makeover in the past three years.Samsung Electronics’ V-NAND memory chipThe first generation chip has 24 layers of cells while the second

[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Electronics has recently inked a patent licensing deal with US-based biometric sensor developer Valencell in a move to further expand its presence in the soaring health care wearables market. Samsung Gear IconX earbuds that also work as a fitness trackerValencell has a highly cited patent portfolio in optical biometric sensor technology, which includes 35 patents granted and more than 70 additional patents pending. With the latest patent licensing deal, Samsung is expected