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Samsung would swap places with Apple in a heartbeat if they could.

"Apple was particularly dominant, as it generated around $133 billion in profits, or just under 62% of the total. Samsung trailed far behind but still generated a healthy $56 billion in profits, or around 26% of the total."
http://bgr.com/2014/03/18/appl...

If you think marketshare is more important to a company than profit, then you don't understand business. Samsung is doing well compared to most mobile phone manufacturers. But they are far behind Apple.

Apple do nothing of the sort. It's Samsung that falsified their sales figures.
http://bgr.com/2014/04/11/2014...

Actually, The original Android company had two phones in development: The sooner and The dream. The sooner was more blackberry like with a physical keyboard, the dream was well, the one you call the redesign. (first artice I found: http://bgr.com/2013/12/20/ipho...) But don't let facts distract you.

As miniaturization proceeded past simply being portable (laptops), it has become all about convenience instead - saving a few seconds at a time. So, does saving a few seconds on something you could do with a smartphone matter at all? Well, it does, if there's anything you want to do 3,500 times per month.

Please ignore the ravings of a lunatic posted above. Nothing like that is happening!

Xbox Live political advertisement targeting leverages user data

http://www.slashgear.com/xbox-...

Microsoft to target political ads on Xbox Live using player data

http://dailycaller.com/2014/03...

Microsoft is getting ready to Scroogle Xbox owners

http://bgr.com/2014/03/07/micr...

Microsoft is using your data to target political ads on Xbox Live

http://tech.slashdot.org/story...

Too addictive

Companies are sitting on an historically mammoth pile of cash (in general) :
https://www.stlouisfed.org/pub...
http://www.dailyfinance.com/on...
http://bgr.com/2013/10/02/appl...
http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...

Why are they being so stingy?

They have realized that it is far more profitable to invest in CONGRESSMEN, than it is to invest in their own labor-pool.

http://bgr.com/2014/02/05/veri...

“We treat all traffic equally, and that has not changed,” a Verizon spokesperson told BGR in an emailed statement. “Many factors can affect the speed a customer’s experiences for a specific site, including, that site’s servers, the way the traffic is routed over the Internet, and other considerations. We are looking into this specific matter, but the company representative was mistaken. We’re going to redouble our representative education efforts on this topic.”

It is still unclear exactly what was causing the issues that Raphael described, but it’s apparently not any form of bandwidth prioritization. Instead, the issue may relate to congestion specific to the Amazon servers or connections that Raphael was testing, but nothing has been confirmed by Amazon.

At least according to BGR

Wins what? I never understand why people pick a tribe and then pray for the destruction of their foes.

You're not alone.

According to TFA, a tiny transceiver can be built into the plastic plug base of a USB cord. Of course, one has not been spotted in the wild, but it sounds theoretically possible.

This is possible: http://bgr.com/2014/01/07/intel-edison-sd-card-computer/

So logically, something a little bit less complicated, but using the similar small chips can easily be hidden. Put it in the right place, no one would notice.

There was. Google supposedly offered them 4 billion:

http://bgr.com/2013/11/15/snapchat-google-buyout-rumor/

Snapchat is gambling that they will keep growing to the point where they can get an even bigger offer.

Meanwhile, how did that Instagram purchase pan out? Anybody know if it's been worth the $1B that Facebook spent on it?

Buying decisions are often NOT made based on how well a product scores on benchmarks. Evidence: iDevices

Except they win most benchmarks handily.

Oooorrrrrr..I could NOT BUY THEIR PRODUCT and along with millions of others refuse to be dictated to and told "You don't need that" and watch it go down in flames and wadda ya know, that is exactly what is happening as folks refuse to buy new PCs or switch to android devices.

Huh, a company treats the users like crap, refuses to listen and has their flagship product go down the shitter, who'd have thunk it?

Nobody makes much profit off Android - most players make no profit at all.

I'm pretty sure Samsung would disagree with you strongly. You are correct that most Android device makers don't make much of a profit but Samsung definitely does well with Android devices. Google doesn't really need to make money off Android directly. Android is a play by Google to protect their actual core business which is advertising. By controlling the platform they can't be crowded out in mobile ads by Apple or Microsoft.

Nokia has actually released 6 new devices. Some phablets and some tablets.

http://bgr.com/2013/10/22/nokia-lumia-1520-lumia-2520-release-date/

Actually, Apple's share of the tablet market has dropped to 32% this year, with Android now commanding 63%. Almost an exact reversal of 2012. These are sales of new units though, so Apple may still have >50% of the tablets which are currently in use. But the trend is pretty clear.

So it's pretty much a repeat of what happened in the Phone market.

I predicted this years ago when the Apple fanboys were claiming Android tablets wouldn't sell.

I have to wonder about a company who has lost 30% of it's stock price in the last year building a $5B headquarters.

When you're sitting on $147 billion in cash, $5 billion for new headquarters is quite affordable... whether or not it's the best possible use of that money, I don't know, but it's definitely not going to bankrupt Apple.

Actually, Apple's share of the tablet market has dropped to 32% this year, with Android now commanding 63%. Almost an exact reversal of 2012. These are sales of new units though, so Apple may still have >50% of the tablets which are currently in use. But the trend is pretty clear. (I'd mention the stats on tablet browser usage, except Apple tends to use unique visitors per month which distorts actual use statistics. On phones, Apple leads 2:1 in unique visitors per month, but Android leads 2:1 in page hits, indicating lots of iPhone users use the web but not very much, while fewer Android users use the web but they use it a lot. I'm still trying to find data on what the situation is exactly with tablets.)

or being run over by a car. It might hold up to that kind of intentional/abnormal abuse, but I wouldn't have the expectation that it would.

Some of us have higher standards than you.

It's more than that (although what you wrote is certainly right).

One of Blackberry's (arguably many) problems is that they failed to realize how the consumer market, being much larger than the enterprise market, could drive the enterprise market. As others have said, by going after the consumer market, by allowing independent devs to profit off the consumer market, and by having a reasonable development system, Apple attracted a boatload of devs and, therefore, features and functionality. Eventually, if you allow the features/functionality to grow properly, the consumer market is going to spill over into the enterprise one. (Side note: by "grow properly", I'm talking about Apple's tight control over the app store. As much as people may dislike it, there's really no disagreeing that the tight control has generally maintained an acceptable level of app quality. I don't think I could say that about BBW.)

Nokia sold 7.4 million Lumias in Q2 2013, Samsung sold about 10 times as many Android phones, but most other Android manufacturers (and there are dozens of them) sold way less than either of the above.

And no Lumia phone was discontinued after 2 months -- perhaps you're thinking about the Facebook phone?

http://bgr.com/2013/08/14/android-smartphone-market-share-q2-2013/

You're welcome.

I'm not sure what the point is that you're trying to make, since you simply posted one link and two snarky words. Perhaps you're trying to contradict my point by saying Android sells well, and IT'S a quality product, proving my theorem wrong?

If so, you are mistaken, and are merely proving my point. Yes, Android does sell well, but I, too, think it's pretty a pretty craptastic platform, in desperate need of numerous improvements. This again merely proves my point that the quantity an item sells does not correlate to the item's quality.

http://bgr.com/2013/08/14/android-smartphone-market-share-q2-2013/

You're welcome.

in the mean time microsoft has no issue charging a similar percentage to android manufacturers

http://bgr.com/2013/05/01/microsofts-android-licensing-agreements-earnings/

That's a bundle of multiple patents, and none of them are FRAND.

Comparing Apples to Oranges.

in the mean time microsoft has no issue charging a similar percentage to android manufacturers

http://bgr.com/2013/05/01/microsofts-android-licensing-agreements-earnings/

in some markets, yes.

Symbian still sells way more than Windows phone, both in smart and feature phone versions.

I'm sure it can't last forever, but who could have said that'd outlast the company.

http://bgr.com/2012/07/19/nokia-q2-2012-earnings-analysis/

Of course, this is a vastly reduced sales figure compared to what it was before Elop opened his mouth.

tablet market share in 2012

the biggest mistake Microsoft made with the basic model Surface was assuming that it was on-par with the lifestyle brand that is Apple and that its offering would be treated as such.

Android isn't a lifestyle brand, but it's soundly beating both Microsoft and Apple.

Apple's tablet market share collapses

If it seems like only a year ago that Apple’s iPad was the only tablet generating serious sales around the world, that’s because it was. IDC’s latest research shows that times have changed, however, and Apple’s iOS is now far behind Android in the race to be the world’s most-used tablet operating system.

According to IDC, Apple shipped 14.6 million iPads in the second quarter of 2013, a 14% drop from the 17 million tablets it shipped in Q2 2013. Over that same time, Android tablet shipments surged from 10.7 million in Q2 2012 to 28.2 million in Q2 2013, an increase of just under 163%.

http://bgr.com/2013/08/05/ios-android-tablet-market-share-2/

The market is speaking and it's saying VERY loudly that it doesn't like lock-in and lock down.

I hate to see this discussion go entirely to the "wearout" issue. Clearly there are some posters here heavily invested in spinning disk. There are more exciting flash technologies in the pipeline.

Samsung has a new flash technology for the Enterprise called 3D V-NAND. By using 24 separate layers of flash on one chip they can keep the feature size up and still keep pace with storage density. They believe they can go to hundreds of layers. There is talk of a 384GB single chip for smartphones and tablets. Not Gbit, Gigabyte.

But no, go back and forth some more about wearout rates.

Who cares? Samsung has already won the battle! http://bgr.com/2013/07/26/mobile-phone-market-share-q2-2013/

As pointed out by others, this 'problem' is nonsense because the random number is generated by the client's browser. A government could lean on browser providers, but that puts the 'attack code' client-side and waiting to be noticed.

Trust of keys from providers is a real problem. In order to be certain that a connection is actually secure from listening you have to trust that what you are getting is the real certificate from the service provider, and not an 'attack' certificate generated by some dodgy CA (e.g. DigiNotar and the Iranian google snooping, and others). This can be reduced in some (limited) cases by using certificate pinning, or by using something like EFF's SSL Observatory.
Even if you actually are getting the 'real' certificate, you need to trust that the service provider hasn't already handed that certificate over to government. This isn't just a problem for the current certificate trust model - obviously if the other person is giving away their keys then you're pretty screwed regardless of the encryption system.
Finally, even if the communication is encrypted and the spying group doesn't have the keys, you still have to trust the service provider to not just hand over the unencrypted network traffic or your content anyway.
That's a lot of trust being spread around.

In the case of something like gmail, the solution is more encryption - it is encryption of the content end-to-end rather than just in transit, and with keys only you and the recipient have. That could be personally exchanged self-signed x509 keys/certs or OpenPGP keys, or even preshared symmetric keys. If you're a bit more trusting, it could be keys signed by a trusted other (a genuinely trusted other, not a large company).

So the solution is more encryption - in part at least. Just not more TLS.

And Samsung still wouldn't care, evidenced by past behavior (otherwise known as the best predictor of future behavior):

Samsung could face 15B Euro fine
Samsung, LG fined for LCD price fixing
Tax evasion, bribery, and price fixing: how Samsung became the giant that ate Korea
Samsung agrees to plead guilty to DRAM price fixing, pay $300M fine
6 Samsung executives headed to jail for price fixing
Samsung, LG fined for mobile price fixing scheme

Everyone is holding these guys up to be some kind of saints in their battle against the evil Apple Empire, when they are thrice-convicted price fixers that screw their customers over at every opportunity, legal or otherwise; and try to screw the competition by suing over standards-essential patents that they don't license for FRAND terms (allegedly).

Samsung is not a friendly company, but I'll likely be modded down for saying so. Whatever, I've got the karma to burn.

Microsoft still dominates the PC market by a staggering margin; Windows currently powers 91.5% of all PCs currently in use, according to Net Applicationsâ(TM) June data.

I'm not sure which number is really correct. but Windows really does dominate the desktop market. I would be more inclined to believe that it's close to 90% than the 70% figure you state, based on what I've seen in the real world. And depending on how you end up counting, you may actually count the same PC twice in both Windows and Linux, and even Apple. Even those I know who run Linux often have a Windows Partition, or a virtual machine. And many people state that this is one of the great advantages of buying a Mac. You get great hardware, and you can run Windows, Mac OS, and Linux all from the same machine.

Works nicely for them all.

Not any more.

"The ‘irrelevance of Microsoft’ illustrated in a single chart
Microsoft’s share of connected device sales peaked at more than 90% in early 2009. Consider that for a moment — more than nine out of every 10 connected devices sold were powered by a Microsoft operating system. Fast forward to the first quarter of 2013 and Microsoft’s share of connected device sales has plummeted to just over 20%."
http://bgr.com/2013/07/22/microsoft-market-share-connected-devices/

You make a funny but with Ballmer and his massive ego? I honestly would not be surprised if rather than admit failure and sell them on someplace like Woot! where they could at least recoup SOME of the cost that he would recycle them or trash them. Of course I said this a while ago that like Windows 8 Ballmer's "Give the customer the bird" strategy was a MASSIVE flop, with less than a million sold during the crucial Xmas season, so the fact that Surface can join Win 8, Zune, Kin, Sidekick, WinPhone 7,isn't a surprise... anybody noticing a pattern here?

I got a question to those "invisible hand" loving free marketers, who say "a company exists to make money"...if that is true why in the fuck hasn't the board punted Ballmer's worthless ass like a 30 yard field return? The man has shat a good 40 billion on dumbass plans that everybody told him ahead of time "Uhhh, nobody wants that Steve" but his answer to everything seems to be a middle finger, the former head of Xbox saying "Just deal with it" frankly summed up Ballmer's attitude for the past 5 years, so why the fuck hasn't his pathetic ass been shown the door?

You would have gotten a better ROI by having a chimp throw poo at the stock page, when your CEO can be beat by a poo throwing chimp? Time to get a new CEO folks, but you think they would have gotten that memo when Forbes named him Worst CEO...unless the rumor is true that Gates has put his stock with Ballmer's to make sure his "little buddy" can't be fired.

So funny that Mac and iOS users are so much happier with their systems

Then you'd agree that Android has surpassed iOS now?

Apple (AAPL) is traditionally ranked near the top in satisfaction surveys due to the simplistic nature of its products. A recent polls suggests that the company’s latest smartphone isn’t doing as well as its competitors, however. According to OnDevice Research, four Android smartphones were found to have higher customer satisfaction ratings than the iPhone 5 in the United States. The research firm found that consumers were happiest with Motorola’s Atrix HD and DROID Razr M, followed by HTC’s (2498) Rezound 4G, and Samsung’s (005930) Galaxy Note 2. The iPhone 5s rating of 8.23 was only good enough for the No.5 spot.

http://bgr.com/2013/02/11/iphone-5-satisfaction-rating-324657/

Times have changed, even in the US.

Really, only now you are getting this feature? Android has been able to do this for as long as I can remember, which is at least back to the 1.6 days.

That's odd, because it was only 3 months ago that some Google engineers were suggesting an idea for such a system.
http://bgr.com/2013/04/03/google-engineers-robocall-blocking-proposal-412166/

What we're talking about here is a blocked number list, not a robocall blocking system.

RTFA.

It was misleading because the summary and headline intentionally left off and totally ignored the following line from the article so that it could have a better chance of getting posted on Slashdot.

There’s every chance this is a temporary solution until Microsoft completes its wider management restructuring.

So... what you're trying to do is deflect a bluntly stated fact by desperately clinging to speculation by TFA's writer? Funny, around these parts it's generally the other way around, where we use facts to shut down rampant, baseless speculation, but if that's the way you like to see it, I guess we can't stop you.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/23/4457082/microsoft-reorg-expected-by-july-1st-rumor

http://bgr.com/2013/06/24/microsoft-reorganization-2013-windows/

http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/2/4486278/don-mattrick-microsoft-exit-major-reorg-rumor

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Microsoft-reorganization-may-lead-to-unified-Windows-department-finally_id44442

http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=microsoft+reorganization&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&channel=suggest

A major reorg of MS is imminent,

While it's likely a good guess, as the end of major development cycle often brings big changes and most CEO's don't tend to collect direct reports, claiming that a reorg 'is imminent' is misleading and likely biased in itself. Are you afraid of competition?

Please RTFA or buy a fucking clue. I am so tired of stupid Slashdot stories and commeters who only get their Microsoft news from Slashdot and don't even RTFA. This is turning into something worse than reddit, same with the Secure Boot and Vista DRM FUD that was spread on here.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/23/4457082/microsoft-reorg-expected-by-july-1st-rumor

http://bgr.com/2013/06/24/microsoft-reorganization-2013-windows/

http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/2/4486278/don-mattrick-microsoft-exit-major-reorg-rumor

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Microsoft-reorganization-may-lead-to-unified-Windows-department-finally_id44442

http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=microsoft+reorganization&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&channel=suggest

>claiming that a reorg 'is imminent' is misleading and likely biased in itself. Are you afraid of competition?

If that is misleading and biased, then what you said is just plain dumb and shows how Slashdot has declined into a sad circlejerk of deluded 14 year olds railing against M$ after reading made up stories to gather karma points. Point out a fact that's not anti-MS or is anti-Apple or anti-Google and get overrated mods for days. Last one out turn the lights off.

"Things like sticking keys on a keyboard by hand, packing playing cards in boxes manually etc. the sort of work that was automated in the early 20th century in the west."

Also, things like loading airport baggage.

It's not just an issue of pay and monotony, some of the jobs involved chemicals that were damaging to humans, such as the neurotoxin n-hexane. Yes, you could employ a dozen people to do the dangerous, life-threatening, health-destroying job that 1 robot can do, but there is a line.

Let me answer that:

Google didn't need Waze. This is a purchase to keep Waze out of Microsoft or Apple's hands. They won't admit it but It must be painful for Microsoft because they are a Waze investor.

It doesn't run my windows programs but crippled phone programs (which MSFT charges as much as 30% over what Apple charges for the same apps) so why should I care? I'm not a .NET programmer so i honestly don't give a shit about editing software on a bus, and I can't see that being a big enough draw to make these things be anything but a bomb. Considering that MSFT sold less than a million over the crucial holiday season and its been reported that they cut the hell out of Surface orders because they couldn't move what they had?

sorry pal but I call it as I see it and its a Vista bomb.

Your subject was too kind, instead of "hmm, maybe" it should have been "what bullshit!"

As you said, Google is attempting innovation left and right, spending millions of dollars on projects that may or may not ever see the light of day. For example, add to your list the very next /. article on providing Internet access to remote/disaster areas with high altitude balloons.

Here's a starter, would take hours to read about all of the research projects they are either sponsoring or working on in house...

http://research.google.com/index.html

Or another list of rumored (well some we now know are true) Google X projects (and I would assume there are more not listed)....

http://oedb.org/library/beginning-online-learning/10-incredible-rumored-research-projects-going-on-at-google-x/

Oh, and you thought you were joking about teleportation...

http://bgr.com/2013/05/29/google-teleportation-research-project/

Looks like your experience is wrong then. On Linux (and to an extent on Mac OS X too), installing software is just clicking on the software you want in the software center, software is well packaged and doesn't come with crapware, and there is no need for anti-virii (at least it's not recommended to install one). Updates that require a restart aren't frequent either.

I agree that Linux software repositories got most of this right a while back. Now that Apple has a Mac App Store, it's becoming easier for Mac users, too. Windows is primarily the one that's lagging behind.

Samsung makes laptops as well as tablets and smartphones. If a laptop with Android is what people wanted, they would sell it.

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/samsung-planning-android-laptops-expert-says-50011199/

http://bgr.com/2013/05/10/samsung-androidbook-release-date-rumor/

http://news.yahoo.com/samsung-reportedly-launch-android-notebook-coming-months-154507413.html

But when the market shifts due to all these terribad consoles will that remain the case?

Only if all three consoles are as "terribad" as some are making the Xbox One out to be. Wii U is just underpowered, not any stricter on users than Nintendo's previous consoles. Sony has already stated that PS4 won't block used games. And I've read rumors that both Sony and Nintendo plan to open up more to smaller developers in this generation, possibly as a response to iOS, Google Play, and Ouya. These might be just enough to keep fans of games in controller genres from defecting to Steam Big Picture or other PC offerings. And speaking of Steam, PC has been "terribad" about used games since the release of Half-Life 2 inaugurated Internet activation for single-player games.

What's Apple famous for again? Yup, they are famous for being famous.
Well that and popularizing the graphic user interface everyone uses in the first place.

Introduced 29 years ago, by Steve Jobs.

And for having a pretty decent Unix-based operating system while Ballmer drives Microsoft off a cliff.

Introduced 13 years ago, by Steve Jobs.

And for designing the first mp3 player that the mass-market embraced.

Introduced 12 years ago, by Steve Jobs.

And for ushering in the change from feature-phones to smartphones.

Introduced 5 years ago, by Steve Jobs.

And for creating an earthquake in the tablet market such that in the future it is predicted more tablets will sell than PCs.

Introduced over 2 years ago, by Steve Jobs.

See where I'm going with this? We all know Apple's history. The point is: what insanely great innovations have they unveiled since the death of Steve Jobs?
Answer: NONE.

What's Apple famous for again? Yup, they are famous for being famous.

Well that and popularizing the graphic user interface everyone uses in the first place.

And for having a pretty decent Unix-based operating system while Ballmer drives Microsoft off a cliff.

And for designing the first mp3 player that the mass-market embraced.

And for ushering in the change from feature-phones to smartphones.

And for creating an earthquake in the tablet market such that in the future it is predicted more tablets will sell than PCs.

But yeah...they are just famous for being famous...

...Until they release a TV with a kinect-like interface running iOS. And then Sony's PS4 and the Wii U crashes and burns, (which is sort of already happening...sales on the Wii U are very poor and Sony's electronics wing isn't doing well either), while everyone is playing Angry Birds on their new Apple TV platform and we get umpteen-million articles about the "New Console Wars," which are now between Microsoft and Apple.

Of course then a couple years will go by and people will forget all of history and again claim that Apple is just famous for being famous. Such is the cycle of Slashdot.

Android is hitting the 1 billion point inside of a few months. They're seeing 1.5M activations per day. 357M Android devices were shipped in 2012.

http://bgr.com/2012/09/12/android-cumulative-shipments-2013-1-billion-units/
http://news.yahoo.com/googles-schmidt-sees-1-billion-android-phones-9-162220903--sector.html

Chromebooks have been topping the Amazon sales charts. Clearly TFA's numbers are bullshit because you don't top Amazon by selling less than 5,000 units.

X is dying. Slashdot confirms it. One of the oldest trolls that still works.

Submitter here. The 5000 figure is from the first 6 months of sales from June/July 2011.The Amazon sales charts numbers are from January of this year. Also, not many folks buy laptops from Amazon, so topping the sales there is nothing big.

OTOH, total sales so through Q1 of 2013 are purportedly in the 500K range. Certainly not a Windows killer yet, nor even an OS X competitor, but 100X more than 5K.