The chief executives of Samsung Electronics Co and Apple Inc are to meet to discuss settling a bitter two-year legal battle over designs and technologies of smartphones and tablets.
A filing with the US District court in San Jose showed yesterday that senior legal executives from Apple and Samsung agreed earlier this week that the chief executives will meet by or before Feb. 19.
The agreement was made in response to a court order to submit a proposal for settlement discussions before a new trial begins in March. The March trial involves more recent mobile devices than previous cases.
The same court ordered Apple and Samsung chief executives to meet in 2012 for settlement talks.
Samsung declined to comment.
Many industry watchers predict the two companies will ultimately settle their patent lawsuits outside court.
The world’s top two smartphone makers have waged legal battles over mobile devices since Apple accused Samsung of copying the iPhone and iPad in 2011. Later, Samsung claimed Apple used its technologies without permission, expanding battles to courts in Asia, Europe and North America.
Separately, Samsung is set to release its Galaxy S5 smartphone by April and is considering using iris scanning technology for the first time as it readies the new high-end handset to compete with Apple’s latest iPhones.
The S5 is to be paired with a new wearable device that will be an evolution of the Galaxy Gear smartwatch, Lee Young-hee, executive vice president of the company’s mobile business, said in an interview on Monday.
“We’ve been announcing our first flagship model in the first half of each year, around March and April, and we are still targeting for release around that time,” Lee said. “When we release our S5 device, you can also expect a Gear successor with more advanced functions and the bulky design will also be improved.”
Samsung, which sells one of every three smartphones globally, is adding new features and models to fend off Apple in the high-end market and Chinese makers luring budget customers with handsets for US$100.
Asia’s biggest technology company will announce at least one other wearable device this year, Lee said, without elaborating.
Samsung registered a design in South Korea in October for eyeglasses that can show information from a smartphone and enable users to take calls.
Sales of the S4, the company’s current marquee handset, slowed after Apple released the iPhone 5S and 5C in September. The 5S includes a fingerprint-identity sensor and Samsung is considering using an eye scanner in its top-end smartphone.
“Many people are fanatical about iris recognition technology,” Lee said at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. “We are studying the possibility.”
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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