Samsung enters the music wars

[unixronin]

First it was a host of no-name MP3 players, and a few standouts that made it into the bigtime like the Rio.  Then there was the iPod, which was enough of a success to get Microsoft's attention, and now Microsoft's bringing out its own player -- and competing service -- which it calls Zune.  Now Samsung is entering the game, with its own YP-K5 player, which has a built-in speaker system (and which is a pretty sharp-looking unit), and its own service, which will debut in Europe.

Gartner analyst Michael McGuire said Microsoft has provided little clarity for its PlaysForSure partners as to how much support they will see going forward or how Zune will work with their players and services.  As a result, he said he expects to see others follow Samsung's lead.

Samsung also claims to have cracked 4G wireless networking; it will be demonstrating its 4G technology at Jeju island, South Korea.  Samsung's claim is 100 megabits to a moving device, with seamless cell handoffs for mobiles travelling up to 60 kilometers per hour, while stationary units should be able to get 1Gbps, 50 times more bandwidth than 802.16.  Samsung intends to demonstrate this by running a videophone and a regular Net browser over a 4G connection while downloading 32 simultaneous HDTV streams over the same connection.

The tiger is flexing its muscles.

Comments

[glitch25.livejournal.com]

*drool*

[richspk.livejournal.com]

Samsung has been in the MP3 player market for a while. Some of it's solid-state units were getting some pretty favorable press, too, when I was paying attention, a year or so ago. I think they may have been the first to market with a cellphone that plays MP3s, too. Also a year or so ago (probably more like a year and a half), I found a <http://samsung.com/products/mp3player/archivedmp3players/yp_t7zxaa.asp>YP-T7Z in the parking lot at my local Shaw's. It'd been run over, and the screen was cracked, but all the controls still worked, and I was able to play music on it.

[richspk.livejournal.com]

I should've previewed that entry!
YP-T7Z (http://samsung.com/Products/MP3Player/ArchivedMP3Players/YP_T7ZXAA.asp)

No, that wouldn't have helped. Preview doesn't render HTML so you can see if it works or not. :-\

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Uh ..... it doesn't...? It does for me.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

(Preview renders HTML, that is. The link seems to be broken, in a Microsoft-backend way.)

[richspk.livejournal.com]

Maybe this is a YMMV thing, but I can't imagine why.

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

It's good to see. I worked at an authorized servicer and Samsung had a good product but was lacking in customer service and support. They were killing themselves by dumping that back on the retail stores. We couldn't get parts and finally in exasperation my boss tried to tell them this. We got fired for being 'uncooperative'.

About a year later we were contacted and asked to be a servicer again. My boss told them exactly what he tried to tell them before and told them what he wanted. Several thousand dollars in stock parts, payment of outstanding warranty claims with penelty and a contract that paid us more than Sony was offered.

It seems the home office finally figured out what the American office was up to and they got rid of the problem and got a new management team. They made some vein opening deals to the retailers they'd been abusing and got back several who had dropped their product.

Panasonic/Matsu_shit_a should learn that lesson.