Samsung said yesterday that unexpectedly high demand for its latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4, was behind shipping issues that delayed scheduled sales in the US market.
“We are experiencing difficulty in boosting supply in the short term because pre-order demand has been far stronger than we anticipated,” said Lee Don-Joo, head of sales and marketing at the company’s mobile unit.
POSTPONING SALES
US telecoms carriers T-Mobile and Sprint both had to postpone scheduled sales of the S4, citing delays in shipments from the South Korean consumer electronics giant.
The world’s top handset maker starts selling the much-anticipated device in South Korea today, followed by a global roll-out over the weekend.
The 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 previous S3 model.
FEATURES
It features a high-definition, five-inch screen, enhanced picture-taking capabilities and the capacity to translate to and from nine languages.
It also recognizes touch by users wearing gloves.
The device was unveiled last month at a well-attended event at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
Samsung did not give a sales target at a press event yesterday, but Kim said he anticipated global sales would “outpace” those of the popular S3.
SHIPMENTS
In January, Samsung said it had shipped more than 41 million Galaxy S3 units since its market debut in May last year.
Analysts and market observers estimate that figure is now close to 60 million units.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained