IDC finds that the refresh cycle of Surface and iPad will keep tablets market alive in the EMEA region

The EMEA tablet market reached 10.9 million units in the third quarter of the year, a drop of 8.2 percent on the same quarter last year, according to data from IDC. The contraction in consumer demand continues to be the main inhibitor of tablet adoption. 

As consumers lack compelling reasons to refresh their devices, life cycles continuously increase, leading to a market slowdown. However, the deployment of tablets in the commercial segments remains healthy, with a 4.2 percent year-on-year increase, due to the larger number of usage scenarios generated by digital transformation.

"In a quarter usually marked by seasonality, where there is a balance between the top two companies, Apple maintained and consolidated its market leadership," said Helena Ferreira, research analyst, IDC Western Europe Personal Computing Devices. "The growing market saturation is driving consolidation, as the top five companies become increasingly dominant, and in developed economies, like in Western Europe, the top five represented more than three-quarters of the market."   

The overall tablet market in Western Europe declined 6.0 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of this year, while and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMA) declined 12.0 percent year-on-year.

"Slate tablet shipments are continuing to drag down overall tablet results in both CEE and MEA, mostly due to the consumer consumption slowdown and significant drops in below-10in. tablets, due to stiff competition from large-screen smartphones," said Nikolina Jurisic, program manager, IDC CEMA.

Apple retained the market leadership in EMEA, ahead of its product refresh cycle. Samsung posted a double-digit decline, as the main focus is on pushing its prosumer S series and driving more profitability. Lenovo regained third position, filling the gap left by Huawei's decline. 

Huawei dropped to fourth and continues to suffer from the impact of the ban on consumer confidence. Amazon remained in the top 5 and continues to dominate the ultra-low-end price ranges, particularly during promotional periods such as Prime Day in the third quarter.

The EMEA tablet market is forecast to decline by 10.2 percent year-on-year in both the fourth quarter and for the whole year 2019. The dynamics affecting the market, particularly in the consumer segment, are expected to persist both in the consumer and in the commercial segments in the coming quarters.

"Despite the decline in total units shipped, the tier A vendors will sustain market value, particularly through the most recent iterations of iPad and Surface," said Daniel Goncalves, senior research analyst, IDC Western Europe Personal Computing Devices. "The new iPad with a first party keyboard and a new operating system designed to enhance productivity features in a tablet environment is expected to generate interest among prosumers and to continue boosting renewals of old tablets. On the other hand, the adoption of Surface Pro as a notebook replacement is expected to continue to thrive and to increasingly drive horizontal deployments in enterprise." 

The commercial market in EMEA is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 4.6 percent between 2019 and 2023.

"In the long run, the commercial segment is expected to grow due to the transition to mobility and growing user case scenarios for deploying tablets into businesses," said Jurisic.

Samsung and MSC Cruises win first place in an indoor LED project for their custom LED display

Samsung Electronics and MSC Cruises were awarded on Monday for ‘Best Overall Customer Experience’ from Daily DOOH, an industry publication, in recognition of their innovation in digital signage.

Samsung provided interactive touchscreens, digital signage and over 2,400 in-cabin TVs throughout MSC Grandiosa, the latest and largest flagship of MSC Cruises, as part of its longstanding partnership with the company. MSC Cruises had launched the MSC for Me digital ecosystem in 2017 to bring the latest connected cruise experience to its guests.

The project’s crowning achievement is located at the ship’s indoor promenade, the central social hub of the ship, where the custom 93-meter Samsung curved LED IF040H-D display is installed on the ceiling. The display has been dynamically designed to create an awe-inspiring atmosphere at all times, and it showcases mesmerizing visual performances three times a day.

“The longest LED sky at sea is one of the unique features of our Meraviglia generation ships, including MSC Grandiosa, topping the Mediterranean promenade and creating a one of a kind experience for our guests,” said Luca Pronzati, chief business innovation officer at MSC Cruises. “We worked together with Samsung to create this core element of the multi-use space, using state-of-the-art technology. This helps to create different ambiances and atmospheres throughout the day and night, while also playing a key role in the ship’s entertainment schedule with its range of mesmerizing shows.”

“Samsung technology is an integral part of giving passengers a completely unique and memorable experience on board many of MSC Cruises’ ships,” said Seog-gi Kim, executive vice president of visual display business at Samsung Electronics. “From the moment they board and throughout their trip, the passengers will be viewing and interacting with Samsung displays that feature superior picture quality and intuitive usability.”

Samsung is developing AI ScaleNet capability, enabling seamless, high-resolution 8K streaming

As the world enters the era of 8K TVs with sales of 8K displays steadily increasing, TV manufacturers are constantly adding more offerings to the mix, the 8K market is expected to continue to grow. 

There are, however, a few challenges that need to be addressed before viewers around the world will be able to enjoy 8K’s stunning visuals in their entirety. First, more 8K content will need to be produced, and second, network connections need to be made capable of supporting the seamless streaming of 8K movies and shows.

To address these issues, researchers from Samsung Research, an advanced R&D hub within Samsung Electronics’ SET Business, have developed an AI Codec known as AI ScaleNet. First introduced at SDC19, this capability enables delivery of 8K content on networks that typically support only 4K speeds, without the need for additional infrastructure.

To learn more about AI ScaleNet’s development process and potential applications, Samsung Newsroom interviewed Kwangpyo Choi and Youngo Park – researchers from Samsung Research’s Visual Technology team, and the first individuals to suggest and develop this type of innovative technology.

AI ScaleNet utilizes deep learning technology to minimize data loss during compression and enable 8K content to be streamed on networks with lower bandwidth capabilities.

Here’s how it works, in a nutshell: 8K content is compressed to 4K quality using an AI downscaler and transmitted to the user’s TV, which utilizes AI to upscale the content back to 8K quality. When asked to describe the inspiration for the technology, Kwangpyo Choi, a researcher from Samsung Research’s Visual Technology, specified a need for a new video compression and transmission technology in order to accommodate the evolving media landscape, and to address related technical challenges.

“Multimedia content is rapidly moving online, so figuring out how to overcome bandwidth limitations for UHD content transmission has become a major task,” said Choi.

“With AI ScaleNet, users will be able to enjoy 8K-quality content, even at lower bandwidths,” added Youngo Park, another Samsung researcher. “In fact, during periods of high network traffic, when speeds tend to drop, viewers can still expect content to be presented at a relatively higher quality.”

AI ScaleNet addresses bandwidth limitations within modern network infrastructures with what’s known as an adaptive AI Codec. “AI Adaptive Bit Rate Streaming refers to AI technology that adapts to various bandwidths and adjusts the resolution to enable seamless streaming,” said Choi.

The difference the technology makes is especially clear when using over-the-top (OTT) services, where viewers typically notice changes in picture quality. As Choi explained, however, Samsung’s AI Codec and AI ScaleNet technology utilize AI that adapts to changes in bandwidth and optimizes quality, so users enjoy the highest-quality streaming experience possible.

Samsung Research Centers earn top places in leading AI challenges

Samsung Electronics’ Global Research & Development (R&D) centers play a key part in developing artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for real-world usage. A credit to the work this advanced R&D branch of Samsung undertakes, both Samsung R&D Institute Poland and Samsung Research America AI Center have recently won two prestigious global challenges.

2019 marks the third year in a row that Samsung R&D Institute Poland, in partnership with the U.K.’s University of Edinburgh (UEDIN), has received accolades at the International Workshop on Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT), one of the top two global workshops on automatic language translation, along with the Workshop on Machine Translation (WMT). 

This year, Samsung R&D Institute Poland won first place in two categories, the first being text-to-text translation from English to Czech and the second – an end-to-end system translating English speech into German text.

For the text-to-text translation category, researchers worked to develop a model to translate the transcript of a spoken English-language TED Talk into Czech. Developing their winning model required the Samsung team to develop large, filtered corpora from which to work and generate as much synthetic data as possible. 

The work done by the Samsung R&D Institute Poland team, together with additional modeling help from UEDIN, was selected as the best in the challenge by human evaluators. This means that the translations produced by Samsung R&D Institute Poland’s system scored the highest both in fluency and adequacy.

Samsung R&D Institute Poland’s participation in their second winning category this year, the end-to-end translation system from English to German, was a first for the team. 

The task was to produce a German-language transcription of an English-language TED Talk audio recording. This task required the development of a single model that could take an audio file input and subsequently produce a translated transcription. It was made more difficult by the deficiency of the provided audio sources, compared to typical speech recognition task. 

Samsung R&D Institute Poland proposed several innovative methods for end-to-end speech translation that mitigated this source paucity, obtaining a state-of-the-art result with their final system that won them first place in the challenge.

This October, researchers from Samsung Research America’s AI Center received first place in the International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV)’s challenge: Linguistic Meets Image and Video Retrieval (Fashion IQ). ICCV is a premier international computer vision conference that took place in Seoul, Korea, this year.

The challenge Samsung Research America AI Center took part in, sponsored by IBM research, aims to develop conversational shopping assistants that are more natural and real-world applicable. The task given to Samsung Research America AI Center‘s team, the ‘Superraptors’, belonged to the domain of image retrieval. 

In the task, an input query was specified in the form of a candidate image as well as in two natural language expressions that describe the visual differences of the search target. The goal of this challenge was to gather opinions and experience from researchers on the emerging space of visual content retrieval with a natural language interface.

Samsung Research America AI Center’s submission to the challenge, “Multimodal Ensemble of Diverse Models for Image Retrieval Using Natural Language Feedback”, blended the given data in different modalities with multiple deep learning models. 

The team’s win marks the first time a Samsung Research team has won a multimodal (language and vision) challenge; previously, Samsung AI Center Moscow, Samsung R&D Institute Poland and Samsung R&D Institute China-Beijing have received awards in single modality challenges.

Samsung secures global recognition for environmental sustainability of its semiconductor offerings

Samsung Electronics announced that its 512-gigabyte (GB) embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) 3.0 will be awarded Carbon Footprint and Water Footprint Certifications from UK-based Carbon Trust. 

Samsung’s 512GB eUFS 3.0 is initial mobile memory in the industry to be recognized by an international certifying organization, which was made possible through the company’s extensive efforts to reduce carbon and water footprints.

The Carbon Trust is a globally accredited non-profit certification body established by the British government to accelerate the move to a sustainable, low-carbon economy. Each certification by the Carbon Trust was made after a thorough assessment of the environmental impact of carbon emissions and water usage before and throughout the production cycle, based on international standards.

Based on the company’s fifth-generation (90+ layers) V-NAND, Samsung’s 512GB eUFS 3.0 provides optimal speed, power efficiency and productivity to deliver twice the capacity and 2.1 times the sequential speed of its fourth generation (64 layers) V-NAND-based 256GB eUFS 2.1, while requiring 30 percent less operating voltage. 

Samsung’s 512GB eUFS 3.0 stacks eight of the company’s fifth-generation 512-gigabit (Gb) V-NAND die and integrates a high-performance controller. At 2,100 megabytes-per-second (MB/s), the new eUFS doubles the sequential read rate of Samsung’s latest eUFS memory (eUFS 2.1) which was announced in January this year. 

The offering’s blazing read speed is four times faster than that of a SATA solid state drive (SSDs) and 20 times faster than a typical microSD card, allowing premium smartphones to transfer a full HD movie to a PC in about three seconds. In addition, the sequential write speed also has been improved by 50 percent to 410MB/s, which is equivalent to that of a SATA SSD.

Additionally, Samsung’s fifth-generation V-NAND utilizes a unique etching technology that pierces more than 90 cell layers in a single precise step. This allows the chip to have nearly 1.5 times more stacked layers than the previous generation and accommodate a 25-percent reduction in chip size. Such innovations help to minimize the overall increase in carbon and water footprints for each V-NAND cell layer.

Samsung is also being awarded Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) labels for its ‘1-terabyte (TB) eUFS 2.1’ and its ‘fifth-generation 512-gigabit (Gb) V-NAND’ by the Korean Ministry of Environment.

Samsung plans to actively expand the adoption of its highly sustainable, high-capacity premium memory solutions into many more flagship smartphones and further strengthen global partnerships for its next-generation memory technologies.

“We are extremely pleased that our cutting-edge memory technologies not only demonstrate our capability to overcome more challenging process complexities, but also are recognized for their environmental sustainability,” said Chanhoon Park, executive vice president and head of Giheung Hwaseong Pyeongtaek Complex at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung will continue to create memory solutions that provide the highest levels of speed, capacity and power efficiency at extremely small geometries for end-users worldwide.”

Gartner reports that global smartphone demand weak in third quarter this year, as Apple and Xiaomi find their shares declining

Global sales of smartphones to end users continued to decline in the third quarter of 2019, contracting by 0.4 percent compared with the third quarter of 2018, according to data released Tuesday by analyst firm, Gartner. Demand remained weak as consumers became more concerned about getting value for money.

This shift has led brands such as Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and Vivo to strengthen their entry-level and mid-tier portfolios. This strategy helped Huawei, Samsung and OPPO grow in the third quarter of 2019. By contrast, Apple recorded another double-digit decline in sales, year over year.

Huawei was the only one of the top-five global smartphone vendors to achieve double-digit growth in smartphone sales in the third quarter of 2019. The company sold 65.8 million smartphones, an increase of 26%, year over year. Huawei’s performance in China was the key driver of its global smartphone sales growth. It sold 40.5 million smartphones in China and increased its share of the country’s market by almost 15 percentage points.

While the ban on Huawei to access key U.S. technologies is yet to be fully implemented as a three-month extension was just announced, the proposed ban brought negativity around Huawei’ brand in the international market. Nevertheless, Huawei’s strong ecosystem in China continued to show growth. 

The current situation with the U.S. has also fostered patriotism among Huawei’s partners, which are now keener to promote its smartphones in China — a development that makes it difficult for local competitors to compete aggressively against Huawei. Huawei’s long investment in subbrands (Honor and Nova), in multichannel operations (online and retail), and in 5G and other technological innovation forms the basis of its success in China.

Samsung maintained the top position globally in the third quarter of 2019, by increasing its smartphone sales by 7.8 percent, year over year. “Samsung’s aggressive revamp of its portfolio, with a focus on midtier and entry-tier segments, strengthened its competitive position,” said Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner.

Apple’s iPhone sales continued to decline in the third quarter of 2019. Apple sold 40.8 million iPhones, a year-over-year decline of 10.7%. “Although Apple continued its sales promotions and discounts in various markets, this was not enough to stimulate demand globally,” said Gupta. “In the Greater China market sales of iPhones continued to improve, however, it follows a double-digit decline recorded at the beginning of the year. The iPhone 11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max saw good initial adoption, which suggests that sales may be positive in the remaining quarter.”

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday approaching, smartphone deals are likely to spur consumer demand in the fourth quarter of 2019. Vendors including Google and Samsung are likely to offer aggressive price promotions not just for their older smartphones but also for new devices such as the Google Pixel 4 and Samsung Galaxy Note 10.

Competition between mobile phone manufacturers will increasingly focus on more intelligent smartphones. These devices will deliver increasingly personalized content and services that draw on users’ contexts and preferences. 

“To deliver relevant personalized experiences, manufacturers will need to improve the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in smartphones and make security capabilities and privacy key aspects of their brands,” said Roberta Cozza, senior research director at Gartner.

At a time of limited technology-led innovation, product managers should focus on offering attractive features at low prices as quickly as possible. By offering better value for money, they can increase demand for smartphones.

“For the majority of smartphone users, desire has shifted away from owning the least expensive smartphone. Today’s smartphone user is opting for midtier smartphones over premium-tier ones because they offer better value for money,” said Gupta. “In addition, while waiting for 5G network coverage to increase to more countries, smartphone users are delaying their purchase decisions until 2020.”

Galaxy Watch and Watch Active UX now get access to latest features found on the Galaxy Watch Active2 smartwatches

Samsung announced that Galaxy Watch and Galaxy Watch Active users will soon be able to enjoy all the user experience functionality found on the Galaxy Watch Active2 following a new software update. The South Korean giant is bringing a range of dynamic updates to its earlier-generation watches, including enhanced Samsung Health features, Bixby features, and customization options.

After the update, Galaxy Watch and Galaxy Watch Active users will be able to take fuller advantage of what Bixby has to offer, including using Bixby Voice to start exercise routines, find out time differences between places, and control their SmartThings ecosystem. Not only does Bixby learn from their routine and become more helpful over time, but its newly expanded language capabilities, include British English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

With this latest upgrade, Galaxy Watch and Galaxy Watch Active users will also be able to customize their Watch faces more than ever before. Across all of our Galaxy Watch models, users will now have access to 24 new sub-dials and complications, building on the 17 already available, making the watch even more customizable, so users can access exactly the information they want, where they want it. 

The improved UX will bring the My Style feature to Galaxy Watch and Galaxy Watch Active for the first time.

Icons for in-use apps have been moved to the bottom of the watch face, helping users keep track of and quickly access any apps with in-progress tasks, such as outgoing calls. Additionally, the current time will now always be displayed on-screen when the stopwatch app is in use or users are on a call, and users can customize the icons in their quick panel after a change in layout. 

Other UX benefits include a clearer graphic UI, easier user interaction, and new emoji offerings in a range of diverse skin tones. For Galaxy Watch Active users, a new Touch Bezel interface is included in the upgrade, allowing users to navigate using finger swipe actions around the bezel.

Samsung will begin to roll out the update region-by-region. The software update will offer Galaxy Watch users even more tools for taking ownership over their health, more opportunities to make navigating Galaxy Watch easier using Bixby Voice commands, and more ways to turn their favorite watch into a statement piece.

Samsung delivers multi-vendor interoperability of cloud-native 5G standalone core with HPE and Openet

Samsung Electronics, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Openet announced integration of a cloud-native 5G standalone (SA) Core with multivendor interoperability. This represents an important milestone and demonstrates significant progress in the journey toward 5G SA, driven by the 5G SA Core collaboration among Samsung, HPE and Openet, announced in February 2019.

Samsung’s 5G SA Core brings together cloud-native 5G network functions from the three companies to deliver end-to-end 5G SA services. For this multi-vendor interoperability test, Samsung has integrated its control, user plane network function & orchestrator with HPE’s shared data environment and Network Functions (NF), and Openet’s policy and charging solutions. 

The 5G Core also provides multiple simultaneous network slices for a variety of services, such as enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) that validate the principles of cloud-native design, virtual network scaling and edge-to-core networks.

“By offering a complete 5G Core that is designed around an open service-based architecture, operators can break out of the single vendor lock-in of previous generation networks,” said Domenico Convertino, Vice President Product Management, Communications & Media Solutions, HPE. “The open architecture also allows operators to have a smooth evolution to 5G with proven co-existence with 4G network technologies.”

“Openness and interoperability are foundations for 5G systems. This demonstration shows the power of taking a multi-vendor partnership approach to providing 5G SA Core and how it can enable network slicing with dynamic policy and charging rules,” said Joe Hogan, CTO and Founder of Openet. “Being able to manage the quality of service for 5G network slicing will allow operators to enter into many new markets with innovative offers and open up new revenue streams.”

With this multi-vendor solution, Samsung’s 5G SA Core enables operators to select innovative network functions offered by numerous IT vendors. Through this approach, combined with the ability to offer advanced telecommunication technologies such as networks slicing and URLLC, the three companies are continuing their efforts in 5G collaboration to bring new opportunities and options to mobile operators.

Earlier this year, mobile operators in Korea and the United States have helped to successfully usher in the 5G era with the launch of commercial service using Samsung Network’s end-to-end 5G solutions, accelerating 5G deployments around the world. 

The 5G SA Core will help operators offer innovative 5G SA services, such as network slicing, mobile edge computing, AI analytics and ultra-low latency (URLLC) networks. The solution will play a significant role in driving new business opportunities for mobile operators as the industry is focusing on the next generation services spanning autonomous driving, smart factory, smart farm, and AR/VR.

“5G SA Core built on open architecture is a key driver of the innovative services that 5G promises, and it will help mobile operators create new revenue streams and business opportunities,” said Wonil Roh, vice president and head of product strategy, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung is excited to continue building out a robust and open 5G ecosystem with global partners like HPE and Openet.  We look forward to extending our 5G technical leadership around the globe by widening our end-to-end 5G solution portfolio.”

The 5G SA Core solution from Samsung can be demonstrated either remotely, or on-site at Samsung’s 5G Core Open Lab located in Korea. The lab offers interoperability tests among multiple vendors and shows the robust features of 5G core solutions, while integrating cloud platforms from partners into Samsung’s functions.