MMCC Blog

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 will be on sale “next week” after the High Court today denied Apple’s request to appeal against an earlier decision overturning the ban on the device.

Late last month the full bench of the Federal Court unanimously reversed a ruling that banned the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia until a full hearing next year. The court had found that the original judge, in granting the temporary ban, didn’t properly weigh up the strength of Apple’s case.

Today’s decision was critical because, if Apple was granted special leave to appeal against the decision, the Samsung tablet would most likely never have seen the light of day, as, by the resolution of the case, it would have been overtaken by newer products.

Australians are leading the smartphone revolution, using their handsets for social networking, shopping and searching.

Samsung achieved 500 per cent year on year growth in smartphone shipments, as it looks likely to take the crown from Apple soon.

Samsung is an experienced player in the mobile space, but few expected to see such a stunning rise amidst some seriously stiff competition.

Apple is currently number one in the market, with Samsung in second and Nokia slumping to third, according to data from Strategy Analytics. If you look at Samsung’s growth rate, however, it looks like the South Korean vendor will be top dog very soon indeed.

In the second quarter, Samsung achieved 500 per cent year on year growth in smartphone shipments. Apple saw 142 per cent growth. Samsung shipped approximately 19 million smartphones, whilst Apple shipped 1.3 million more. If Samsung keeps this pace up, when the next quarterly results emerge it will have overtaken Apple with plenty of breathing space between the two as well.

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Lawsuits by Apple against tablet makers offering devices running the Google Android platform are inspired by Google’s success, said Eric Schmidt last month.

The Google executive chairman was speaking at a Google conference where he also accused Google’s competitors of responding with lawsuits rather than innovation.

Few people in the tech sector would be willing to accuse Apple of a failure to innovate, but there’s little doubt Android is threatening Apple, with new data released by Canalys yesterday showing of the 56 countries the research firm tracks around the world, Android led in 35 of them, achieving a global market share of 48 per cent.

Samsung is the largest Android device vendor and the number two vendor overall in the market, Canalys says, but also of note is that the Asia Pacific region is leading the growth for Android.

Apple obviously doesn’t want to find its Australian business in the same situation as South Korea where Android holds an 85 per cent platform share, or Taiwan, where it has 71 per cent. Android’s share of the smartphone market in Australia is closer to 30 per cent, compared with Apple’s 40 per cent, according to IDC.

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eBay Australia has revealed plans to more than double its fees on some auction listings, effectively penalising non-professional sellers.

The days of eBay as largely an online garage sale are finished as the company pushes sellers away from second-hand auctions towards listing new items in the fixed price format and on eBay Stores.

But as consumers and mum and dad sellers typically run one-off auctions as opposed to opening their own stores or setting a fixed price, they appear to be left worse off by the upcoming changes. 

From September 22, eBay Australia will scrap insertion fees for the first 30 items listed for auction in a month. Insertion fees currently range from $0.30 to $3.50 for most items (excluding vehicles).

However, final value fees will increase from 5.25 per cent to 7.9 per cent, capped at $49.95 for each of the first 30 listings per month. This is now the same as the final value fee paid by professional sellers with eBay Stores.

Topfield has expanded its AV range with another flagship personal video recorder, the TRF-7170. Meanwhile, Kogan Technologies has announced a cut-priced PVR of its own.

Home entertainment manufacturer Topfield has announced a new flagship PVR – the TRF-7170. The new model is much the same as its TRF-7160 stable mate, though with two notable exceptions: it comes with wireless local area network connectivity and has doubled the onboard storage for a total of 1TB. This is enough to store hundreds of hours of free to air television.

The Topfield TRF-7170.

“Thanks to the TRF-7170’s huge storage capacity combined with its ability to record up to four programs at once, weekday nights in Australian households need no longer result in quarrels over whether to watch Masterchef or Man Vs Wild whilst recording hours of Tour de France highlights,” said Joseph Tsen, TOPFIELD’s National Sales & Marketing manager.

Like its 500GB sibling, the Topfield TRF-7170 comes with two DVB-T HD digital TV tuners and is capable of recording four programs at once. Other highlights include offline intelligent recording (IR), simultaneous playback while recording, Divx HD playback support and a pair of USB ports in place of the TRF-7160′s one. As mentioned, it also comes with WiFi functionality, although this requires the purchase of a Topfield Wireless Dongle.

The Topfield TRF-7170 is available now and has an RRP of  $599.00. Visit Topfield’s web site for more information.

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HECKLER

Illustration: Simon Letch

WALKING past a bus shelter advertisement for toothpaste at the weekend, I made a remark to a friend about some graffiti defacing the model’s sparkling teeth. It said: ”Free Charles Manson.”

“Some little brat wrote that,” I scoffed. “Possibly one of those Ritalin-popping, iPod-using, fast-food-ingesting, sociopaths-in-training who thinks it’s cool to glorify a half-crazy murderer.”

My friend, who happens to teach at high school, examined the graffiti for a moment. 

“I think you’re wrong,” he said.

When asked to explain, the year seven teacher put up a pretty convincing argument.

His first point was the handwriting. “It’s neat,” he said. “And the rounded ‘a’ in Manson demonstrates a fairly good grasp of cursive writing.”

He explained that at the school where he taught, reliance on keyboards had obliterated the average student’s ability to write in anything beyond an illegible scrawl he called ”pen vomit”.

Some extracts from an article by Robert Gottliebsen:

The 2011-12 financial year, which starts in two days, will require a complete change of business model for a large number of Australian enterprises.
This week I was talking with eBay Australia managing director Deborah Sharkey, who declares that the US giant is now set to be the biggest online shopping mall in Australia. In addition, she forecasts that online shopping will rise by 30 per cent compound a year which means – based on the current online retailing level of $27 billion a year – it will exceed $100 billion in five years….

…Every retailer in Australia must now look at their model and decide what response they should make.
We could go to Telstra’s Yellow Pages, which has historically had margins of well above 50 per cent. They have used that model to brilliantly drive Telstra’s cash flow. Now they are changing, and offering customers a mixture of print and electronic in whatever medium suits their customers.
That will result in much lower margins but will transform the business into a twenty-first century services provider…

…At the end of the Sharkey interview, there is a most disturbing allegation – that some suppliers are not supplying goods to retailers on the eBay shopping mall. This will likely cause an ACCC inquiry. Should any retail or retail-linked groups be pressuring suppliers, then their executives face long and well-deserved jail sentences.

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Apple’s dominance of the mobile phone and tablet market has officially taken hold in Australia, with two new surveys highlighting just how tough it’s been for any organisation operating in the shadow of the tech giant.

Apple has taken out the top position in mobile phone brands in Australia, capturing nearly a third of the market, and knocking off Nokia, according to analyst firm IDC. Apple iPhone shipments jumped by 13 per cent in the first quarter of the year, despite a 5 per cent year-on-year decline in the overall market.

IDC says 79 per cent of new mobiles shipped are now smartphones, hitting Nokia hard, with Symbian dropping 9.5 per cent market share when compared with the same quarter in 2010. Apple now holds close to 40 per cent market share of the smartphone market, up almost 10 per cent, with nearest competitor Android holding nearly 30 per cent.

Android at least has a chance at catching Apple on a devices shipped basis, with a number of new Android phones headed for our shores later this year…

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Apple plans to build a circular “spaceship” building in hometown Cupertino that will hold 12,000 employees – and be the best office building in the world, chief executive Steve Jobs said.

The ailing chief of Apple, formally on leave from the company, made his second public appearance in two days late on Tuesday in the US to show off plans to the Cupertino city council.