Samsung HomeSync Enters Media Hub Market

Media Hubs have been around for a few year. Apple TV functions as one currently, though there is still speculation that Apple will be able to provide content from the major networks in the future. Google has also been involved in bringing content to your TV. Due to a variety of issues, we are not going to see media hubs providing TV content for a while. In the mean time, we are seeing TV media hubs as the future for merging TV and the Internet together. Roku is another of the well known names in that area. And the media hub market is gaining another company to compete for your home.

The Samsiung HomeSync is coming to provide you with a home media center which will be running Android (Jelly Bean) and was announced this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. There are several things which make this different than others on the market today. The first one is the on board storage which is set at 1 TB. That provides for a decent amount of disk space for videos that you might download. The bigger feature for the HomeSync is that it lets you use your Galaxy mobile devices to control the HomeSync as a remote control. That gives you access via your Samsung Galaxy S3 or Galaxy Note as an example to control this media hub.

The ability to use your own mobile device to control this is great and removes the idea of having yet another remote in the house. Coming with a dual core 1.7 Ghz processor and 1 GB of memory, along with 8 GB of NAND storage for apps guaranteeing fast performance. You can either use a wired network connection or WiFi to provide for streaming data or other activities. Performance over WiFi may be an issue, so for the best performance, stay with a wired connection. Since this is part of your network, you can share things from other sources on the network. Or you can go to the Cloud to pull down other content. Samsung has their own Cloud service and we expect to see them offering a decent amount of storage space for free with the Samsung HomeSync.


The current planned release for the HomeSync is set for April with no pricing revealed at the moment.

Patent Infringement Cases In The news

Battles between Samsung and Apple around the world.

It seems that this year has been taken up with news of patent infringement cases between Apple and Samsung around the world. And things do not look like they are going to be letting up anytime soon. These battles have been going on between the two at the same time they are doing business with each other. Samsung supplies chips to Apple for their popular mobile devices. And yet they have chosen to attack each other over patents and patent infringements around the globe. Most of this can be seen because of Samsung’s growth in mobile devices which is threatening Apple.

Last week, there were a number of things going on between these two. One was a decision by a court in the Netherlands where they ruled that Apple infringed on a 3G patent held by Samsung. Samsung only got the ruling on 1 of 4 patents which they were claiming Apple had infringed on. They had hoped for much more than that. This ruling is in opposition to one in Germany last March where the court there ruled that Apple did not infringe on the exact same patent. How this difference gets worked out is unknown.

The big case between Apple and Samsung is the one in Northern California which is currently scheduled to be heard by a jury on July 30th. The judge in the case, Judge Koh, has restricted the number of exhibits by each party to 125 exhibits which can be presented in court. She has also restricted each party to no more than 25 hours of arguments before the court. It is hoped that this will force both parties to focus on the strengths of their case and not burden the court with unnecessary information. This particular case, when decided, will bear heavily on settlement talks between the two companies. All of this comes after court mandated settlement discussions failed.

Patent infringement cases have become problematic and are now being seen as a way to stop or slow your competition. In the case of Apple, Samsung’s successes are threatening Apple’s product lines. This is especially true with recent Samsung products, such as the Galaxy S3. At some point, the way that patent infringement cases are handled is going to have to change as it ties up the courts and the decisions are slow to come.

In the end, these cost consumers as the legal costs are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

Dropbox Extends Free 50 GB Storage To Galaxy Tab 2 10.1

With Samsung partnership, another new Galaxy product gets free space.

 
Since Google Drive has come to market, it seems that Dropbox has been working overtime to maintain their market leadership. Their cloud sharing software is run on more platforms than others providers of like products, but the market has been getting crowded of late. As a result, Dropbox is finding it more difficult to maintain their market lead. Now comes word they are offering up to 50 GB of free space when you purchase the new Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 tablet. This comes on the heels of them offering 50 GB of storage for 2 years with the purchase of the Galaxy S3. That news brought a lot of interest as a result.

It would appear that offering free space is how Dropbox is going to maintain their presence in the market. This latest offering for the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 tablet is only for a period of 1 year and not the 2 years offered for the Galaxy S3. It is still a great deal as you are saving the normal charges of $9.99 per month or the annual fee of $99. Either way, you are saving a lot of money and if you look at it as a savings off the price of the coming tablet, it makes it even more of a bargain. This free storage fits in with the needs of moving information around and is becoming very popular.

For Dropbox, this is a great move and where they are expanding, they remain in the news as people report on it. As with any storage, there is a tendency to fill up the space and a majority of people are likely to continue using it after the 1 year period is up and pay for the privilege. That is a great way to grow the business. And by associating the free space with new products, they are getting more free advertising.

The Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 tablet is going to be out this weekend and along with that comes some great pricing at $399.99. To put that into perspective, the current Apple iPad sells for $499 for a similar WiFi only version with 16 GB. Throwing in the savings for the free cloud storage from Dropbox and it makes this an even better deal. You should see this online this weekend at Best Buy, Walmart, Office Depot and others. Office Depot is showing the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 on pre-order for the $399.99 price with the free 50 GB of Dropbox storage for the first year.

As shown below from the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 features page, the promotion of the free offer is being prominently shown on the site. This recent deal may also be extending to the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 tablet as there are reports of people getting the up to 50 GB of free storage as well. On some forums, it is being reported that when you install the Dropbox app on the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, you then get the expansion of your storage to 50 GB. Not everyone is indicating success in expanding their total storage.

For now, the Samsung and Dropbox relationship looks like it will benefit those purchasing the selected products from Samsung with the free space. So it raises the question of whether the offer for free storage is going to cause people to take more of a look at the associated Samsung products?

Dropbox Offering 50 GB Of Free Storage For 2 Years

Dropbox providing space as promotion with Samsung Galaxy S3 phone

 
Dropbox has been seeing competition over the past year and the most recent in that competition is Google and their Google Drive which offers up 5 GB of free space for the free account. Dropbox only offers 2 GB as part of the free space and then you have to do other activities to increase that space. They make you jump through some hoops to grow your space with the most recent efforts involving your pictures. All of this may now have to change with Google entering the game in a David and Goliath story. When Google enters a market, they have an impact to the market and impact smaller sized companies quite often. But that is not always the case with Google taking over and the Dropbox story may be another situation where Google does not grab a large market share.

Dropbox has teamed up with Samsung to provide you with 50 GB of free storage space. That sounds like a fantastic deal as compared to the normal 2 GB which they offer when you sign up. Obviously there are rules and regulations associated with this, but they are worth considering. There is a limited amount of time for the 50 GB of storage and it is 2 years. After that, you would have to pay for the continued usage of that space which is current $99 per year (or $9.99 per month) for the Pro 50 package. This is a great marketing idea from Dropbox as once you have the space used, you are more than likely to continue using it after the 2 year free period. But, there is still one more catch to the rules and regulations.


You have to purchase the new Samsung Galaxy S3 smart phone which was announced this week. The 2 year subscription comes bundled with the purchase of this recently announced smart phone as a way to promote it. The joint offering is an excellent way to promote both product offerings. Samsung sold over 20 million of their Galaxy S II smart phone in February after being launched last April. The expectations for the Galaxy S3 are even higher and with the Dropbox deal, they are adding to the movement for this device. There are many other features which will have higher sales and it is expected to be available this summer.

The idea of cloud storage has been growing for smart phones as you can store things on your local computer and then have them available on other devices including your smart phone. Apple raised the idea up with iCloud last year and the iPhone 4S and it looked to be a big hit. Samsung has followed up on the cloud storage, but rather than create their own service, they took a smarter route and partnered with a well know provider in Dropbox. This is a much better route to take and opens things up for consumers in a way that Apple's iCloud cannot do.

Dropbox has the distinction of providing their Dropbox functionality on far more devices than the competition and sets them ahead of all the others out their providing cloud storage. With the growing importance of pictures for social media and the improving picture taking capabilities of smart phones, adding Dropbox makes sense. You can take pictures with the coming Galaxy S3 and put them in your Dropbox folder on the phone and immediately have them available on your desktop computer in the Dropbox folder. This is a big deal and is only going to grow much larger this year.

While you may not be interested in purchasing the Galaxy S3 and getting the 50 GB of free storage, the idea of higher end smart phones having free cloud storage through providers like Dropbox is hopefully going to become the standard with all new phones this year.

Do you believe all smart phones should come with bundled cloud storage?

Samsung Creating New Mobile Device Categories

Mobile Device Trending

We have seen new categories of devices being created and the one that comes to mind is that of Apple and how they established the tablet category with the release of the iPad. Apple has also attempted to combine categories together such as combining the iPod with the iPhone so that it reduces the number of devices which you have to carry with you. They were extremely successful in doing that. These kinds of things are going to continue as technology continues to improve. It seems that Samsung is attempting to create new categories with their Samsung Galaxy Note.

The Galaxy Note is the combination of a smart phone and a mini-tablet to create something new and unique. The note has created what Samsung is calling the "Phablet" category and it was recently released in the US. It is being heavily advertised to promote the use of a stylus which has not been really accepted since the Palm Pilot. The Galaxy Note appears to be growing in use throughout the world while carving out a brand new niche category for the device. It is starting to look like Samsung is going to be successful in their efforts to promote the Galaxy Note.

We are now hearing about a whole other combination of devices from the Mobile World Congress where Samsung is announcing the Galaxy Beam which is the combination of a smart phone and a projection device. Contained in a single device, it presents a portable projection device for those who need something on the fly to show people a presentation or stream a movie. This could be viewed as a great item for business people who travel a lot and do not want to carry around projection equipment.

From a trending perspective, we now have a smart phone and mini-tablet combination in the Galaxy Note. We have a smart phone and projector combination from the Galaxy Beam. Both of these are sporting 4G LTE capabilities and dual core processors. It makes one wonder what the next trend is going to be with smart phones where technology merges together into a single device. We already have music players being combined with smart phones.

What do you think is going to be the next item added to a smart phone?