According to a new report published by The Korean Times Samsung “is seeking a complete ban” on iPhone 5 sales in Korea even before the device is released in the market.

Just after the arrival of the iPhone 5 here, Samsung plans to take Apple to court here for its violation of Samsung’s wireless technology related patents. For as long as Apple does not drop mobile telecommunications functions, it would be impossible for it to sell its i-branded products without using our patents. We will stick to a strong stance against Apple during the lingering legal fights.

The publication claims that Samsung’s executive is very confident about “a big breakthrough” provided the Korean giant wins in Germany.

Apple is Samsung’s largest customer for NAND flash memory and custom-built A4 and A5 processors. The Cupertino, California-based company has been reportedly looking at alternative suppliers and considering TSMC for future supplies.

Apple has been quite aggressive when it comes to patent litigation by calling companies “copycats” and suing for any possible patent infringement. It’s very interesting to note that Samsung is planning to target an unannounced product with it’s wireless technology patents. Samsung will certainly try to put pressure on Apple to settle the matters out of court.

The Dusseldorf court in Germany recently ruled that Sumsung must cease sales of Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet as it was found to be very similar and a copy of iPad’s design.

In a recent report Reuters also suggested that Samsung could be looking at being awarded an injunction against iPhone 5 in Europe.

Samsung Electronics Co is considering legal action to ban sales of Apple’s new iPhone, a source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, in what could be its strongest step to defend against claims by the U.S. firm that the South Korean firm had copied its product designs. The source declined to elaborate further on where Samsung planned to take legal actions and the Maeil Business Newspaper reported that the South Korean firm may seek injunction request on Apple’s new iPhone in Europe.

Apple is widely expected to announce the release date for iPhone 5 during a media event rumored to be held on October 4th. The fifth-gen iPhone according to speculation and previous reports will feature 8 megapixel camera, dual-core A5 chip, higher RAM and a radically thinner design.

{via 9to5 Mac}

Apple in its complaint alleges that Galaxy Tab 10.1 infringes 10 patents which include copying the “look and feel” and touchscreen technology of the iPad. Steven Burley, Apple’s lawyer, told Federal Court Justice Annabelle Bennett in Sydney that the company wants to seek an Australian injunction and stop Samsung from selling its tablet in other countries too.

Samsung, based in Suwon, South Korea, agreed to stop advertising the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia and not to sell the device until it wins court approval or the lawsuit is resolved, according to an accord reached by lawyers during a break in the hearing. Should Apple lose its patent infringement lawsuit, it agreed to pay Samsung damages, which weren’t specified.

Apple had filed a patent lawsuit against Samsung in April in which it alleges that the company has copied Apple’s products to mislead people and even infringes on several technology patents.

Bennett has scheduled a hearing for August 29th to review the case. It will be interesting to see how this case further unfolds.

With Apple’s devices “Buyer’s Remorse” typically accounts for 1 or 2% of sales. And in line with that it appears that around 2% of iPad purchasers have returned their iPads for various reasons after purchase.

With the Samsung Galaxy Tab however, that figure is a whopping 16%. It hovered at around 13% through November of last year, but shows signs of accelerating now we are in the New Year, and stands at 16% for January of 2011.

Reasons for this could be many and varied. But most likely are because the Android experience on Samsung’s flagship tablet is not sufficiently iPad like to make the experience enjoyable; as many reviewers have found. Or perhaps people are simply returning Tab’s expecting more and better from the iPad 2.

Either way, Google and Samsung need to take a long hard look at both the Android OS and their tablets and figure out fast what is not making it such a run away success like the iPad. To be fair Google already admit that Android as it stands now is not designed for tablets, but they don’t seem to be pushing out a tablet OS as fast as they need to…

Samsung Returns? Is it Android’s fault? Or the Samsung Galaxy Tab itself? Let us know your thoughts in the comments…

During a quarterly earnings call on Friday, a Samsung exec. revealed that the figures they were so proud of don’t really tell the whole story. See, that’s the number they shifted to their retail partners and wireless companies throughout the globe. It’s NOT the number that paying customers have snapped up. In fact the number bought by customers is in fact ‘quite small’ as the executive is quoted as saying.

Samsung were quick to point out that they were ‘quite optimistic’ about 2011 but they declined to go further than that.

I can’t be the only one who’s desperate to hear real sales numbers for the Galaxy Tab! I want to know whether, as I suspect, the real Android fans out there are waiting for Honeycomb to put in an appearance before splashing the cash or if the Tab is just hampered by the extortionate price.

Do you have, or even plan to buy a Galaxy Tab? Do you like it, and do you wish you’d waited? Answers in the comments below please, I’d love to hear from you!

Update:

Samsung’s executive Lee Young-hee actually said, “and then in terms of sell out we also believe that was quite smooth”. The original transcript of the call quoted her incorrectly as saying they were “quite small.”

Thanks flossymonster

After a stuttering release throughout many countries over the last few weeks, Samsung’s Android-based tablet is finally starting to gain some momentum among new tablet buyers. With new tablets starting to appear from the likes of Toshiba and Lenovo, Samsung will undoubtedly be hoping sales don’t slow too much, especially with Apple expected to announce the successor to the original iPad in early 2011.

Since its release earlier this year, Apple’s iPad has stormed to a 95% tablet market share, but the majority of its life has been spent as the only real consumer-orientated machine. Hopefully the influx of Android hardware plus the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook will push Apple forward with its own devices.

Front-facing camera and retina-display please Mr. Jobs!

DSG International, the group responsible for UK chain PC World, amongst others, has so many Folios returned by unhappy customers that they’ve jacked the 10″ tablet’s price up to a whopping £999 ($1612) in order to DISCOURAGE sales. Considering the original price was just £350 ($560), it’s fairly clear they REALLY don’t want to sell any of Toshiba’s Folio. Coming just days after the hardware’s official launch. Ouch!

A post over on Engadget highlights issues such as an unusually poor screen, lack of Android market and general poor build-quality.

Be sure to check out Engadget’s video below, and ask yourself this question: what happens if someone DOES spend a grand on it!?

Have you bought or used a Toshiba Folio 100? How did you find it? Let us know in the comments!

One of the main complaints about Samsung’s Galaxy tab is that it just isn’t big enough. Weighing in at 7″, a full 2.7″ fewer than Apple’s iPad, many feel the screen just doesn’t provide enough real estate for anything other than blown-up phone apps. But how about a 10.1″ version?

Over at the FPD International Trade Show in Japan, Samsung has been showing off it’s next generation LCD displays, and it’s enough to make your mouth water.

Featuring a 1024×600 resolution, the screen boasts a 1,000:1 contrast ratio and is just 1.8mm thick. The stats really don’t do this thing justice, but the photos certainly go some way to giving us an idea of just how gorgeous a potential Galaxy Tab XL could be. Unfortunately that isn’t quite around the corner; the panel isn’t expected to be ready for mass-production for a couple of years according to Engadget, and they’re usually pretty accurate!

Of course, if Apple’s announces a Retina Display equipped iPad Mk2 next year, the ante will well and truly, be upped!

There have been a wealth of articles, and pretty comparison tables produced recently in most major publications to show us just how the upcoming crop of “iPad Killers” will shape up against their nemesis.

Breaking them down the differences between the Apple iPad, Samsung’s Tab, Dell’s Streak and the BlackBerry PlayBook (I’ll come back to that name in a while) come down to four key statistics.

1. The size of the screen, and consequently the entire tablet.
2. The processor.
3. Camera, cameras or no camera.
4. Price.

And an honourable mention for Flash!

Apple’s iPad is the heaviest and the biggest of the three, it certainly doesn’t sport the fastest silicon of the three, doesn’t support Flash and has no cameras. Seems like a slam-dunk for the competition, right?

Not really. I’ll explain why…

All of the iPad’s rivals have smaller screens, and also have lower resolution display panels. None of which are 720p, including the iPad. But the iPad is the closest of the three. It’s also the perfect form factor for the kind of stuff people want to do on a tablet. Apple get that. No-one else quite does yet. Android are probably the closest of the three or four mobile operating systems to iOS to “get” touch interfaces and the ergonomics of the devices associated with that kind of workflow. And even Android has a ways to go yet. Luckily its developer community is growing in experience and we are seeing some cool things coming down the Android pipe. The Samsung Tab’s OS is a good example of that.

With the noticeable exception of the Dell Streak, which with a 5 inch screen is too big to put in your pocket, seems like a podgy iPod Touch rather than a tablet, and seems confused about whether it is a big phone or a remote control, the other two tablets are also uncomfortably placed between the size of the iPad and the iPod Touch. Their size and their proposed functionality are slightly at odds.

Being hyper critical it would be easy to say that Dell, Samsung and BlackBerry have fallen at the first hurdle. Because they don’t seem to get what using a tablet is all about. Yet, it’s all about something in your hands that feels like an electronic magazine, and is comfortable to use as such. For that kind of application the iPad is the correct size. Which is presumably why Apple made it that way.

Both the Tab and the Streak offer similar core silicon for their devices as the Apple iPad does. They all basically have the same 1Ghz ARM SoC, albeit with a few tweaks to each manufacturers specifications. But Dell and Samsung’s offerings are barely on sale yet, whereas Apple’s iPad has been kicking around in the market place now for quite a few months. And their silicon has been tweaked to work with iOS from inception. It’s a small but very important differentiation when it comes to that super secret Apple sauce that just makes thing work.

BlackBerry have gone another way altogether and have slapped a dual core ARM SoC in their PlayBook tablet, which is similar in many ways to what we would expect Apple to put in its next processor revision (The Apple A5) for the next iPad and iPhone refresh. The iPad refresh coming quite significantly sometime around the launch date of BlackBerry’s tablet. The difference is that Apple know how much power their A5 chip will need, because they will have designed it to work within the bounds of their tight (and maturing) Tablet design. A design based on an already proven model which has fantastic battery performance. BlackBerry are still working through that, most likely with an off the shelf ARM core which is much more power hungry than Apple’s A5 will be. To be honest it is quite worrying that the PlayBook’s User Interface is still only visible as PR CG mock ups. It is also worrying that they are allowing full multitasking and Flash on their mobile device. Something we know does not work well even on up to date Android hardware; from either a performance or battery life perspective.

As an aside BlackBerry have gone the same disastrous route that Palm did with their initial approach to their SDK and prospective developers. As it stands right now there is no native SDK for writing apps which use OpenGL or run native code on the PlayBook. Sure, Apple made the same mistake, but they remedied it quickly. Palm didn’t and it killed their developer program out of the gate. Having seen both Apple and Palm make this mistake BlackBerry can only have made it again because they were forced to (or are superbly ignorant). I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say they were forced to. The only reason for that would be that their tools are not mature enough (or even in existence yet) to allow developers to program for the platform in the way they’ll want to and that is a bad sign at this stage.

Apple has stuck cameras, both front and rear facing, into its iPhone and the recent iPod Touch update. At the same time they have been making us all realise how much we want Facetime video calling on all our devices, which is an industry standard for video communication that they are hoping to license to other manufacturers. Facetime is a defacto video communications standard which costs Apple nothing to run. The onus being on network providers and eventually mobile data packages to provide bandwidth. And in the next iPad refresh it is a no brainer that we will see front and rear facing cameras if for nothing else than Facetime calling.

Apple’s current tablet offering, the iPad, ranges in price from around $500 up to $850. A price that it doesn’t seem that BlackBerry, Samsung or Dell are able to undercut.

And when Apple rolls out the iPad 2 it will most likely stay at the pricing levels of the current iPad model, while that first generation model will disappear or drop in price further.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Samsung’s Tab will sell. It’s a nice piece of kit. And Android is perfectly suited to it. The version it runs fitting the tablet almost as well as iOS fits the iPad. But it will sell to a different market, and it’s certainly not going to stand up to Apple’s iPad revision, due out in a few short months.

The Dell streak it is best to forget I think. Enough said.

Finally the fire-breathing, dual core monster that is BlackBerry’s PlayBook will probably be hitting the market about the time we are all talking about the new iPad. And if it wobbles just once in any area.. Say battery life, or the stability of its untested OS, or problems getting Flash to play nice, or heaven forbid because of BlackBerry’s legendary manufacturing problems then the new iPad will crush it.

If Apple stick an HD Retina style display in the new iPad then that really is game over for BlackBerry and Samsung also, until they rush something else out of the door. And here we see the problem. All the other manufacturers are still following Apple’s lead. Reacting to Apple rather than out thinking them. And the only places they are thinking independently (like with device and screen size decisions) they seem to have gone the wrong way altogether.

Sure Apple’s iPad is not expandable, has proprietary connections, no Flash and is getting on for a year old. But it’s that year of the iPad in the market, and several years of developing iOS and iDevice manufacturing, as well as building custom silicon that means that anything that Apple does from now on in is going to continue to excel, and make any other manufacturer look like it is playing catch up for at least another round of hardware revisions in the mobile market place.

So about the time that the Galaxy Tab is starting to sell in good numbers, the Dell Streak has been discontinued and the BlackBerry PlayBook hits the market the new iPad killer will be Apple’s 2011 iPad revision.

One final thought. BlackBerry need to change the name of their tablet. Outside of the US “PlayBook” sounds like a kids coloring book.

And here’s one of those comparison charts for you:

*Battery life as specified by the manufacturer

Do you think Apple has got the Tablet market in its pocket for the foreseeable future? Have your say in the comments…

Comparison Chart Source: Wired