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Apple, Xiaomi got momentary crown while Samsung entirely won Europe in 2021
Recently, Counterpoint research published their new report, revealing the market conditions of Europe for the entire 2021. While the European market’s leadership exchanged between top manufacturers four times, Samsung remain the leader with its impressive Galaxy sales.
Going further with the latest Counterpoint report, in 2021, the European smartphone market saw the most intense competition yet as the leadership shifted between top vendors four times, while some OEMs secured enough response in the region ever.
Following the launch of the iPhone 13 series, Apple impressively started 2021 in Europe with a market-leading 34% share. Later on, Samsung introduced the Galaxy S21 series, which grew sales by 24% compared to January and shifted it to the top spot in February 2021.
Further, Xiaomi gained the top spot in the European market for the first time in June 2021 (helped by good growth in Russia, Spain, and Italy) as Samsung suffered significant supply issues starting in May due to COVID-19 related factory shutdowns in Vietnam.
In addition, you can check the Q4 2021 market share of Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, OPPO, realme, and other OEMs below.
βIt is great to see the European smartphone market growing in 2021, but that only tells half the story; COVID-19 impacts resulted in a 14% annual drop in sales in 2020, which means the market is still well-below pre-pandemic levels,β said Jan Stryjak, Associate Director at Counterpoint.
Samsung managed to silence the AI Moon controversy with an official explanation. Samsung might be taking a sigh of relief in unawareness of the radical use of AI in its photo Remaster tool as it just caught bringing artificial teeth to a baby pic.
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Twitter user @earcity shared the video, which shows how Samsung and One UI features are radically using AI to make things magical. The user shared a video revealing that the Remaster feature brought teeth to a 7-month-old baby, who has nothing in reality.
Since the user is shocked to see artificial teeth in the baby’s pic, it raises questions of authenticity. No doubt, machines, and AI don’t have a brain to think or emotions to feel, which makes us just laugh over these kinds of magical incidents.
However, smartphone vendors can make kind use of deep machine learning and artificial intelligence. According to Samsung, the Remaster feature just upscales the image and removes reflections and shadows so the photo can look better and blur-free.
This is how gross Remastering is on the @SamsungMobile @Samsung #S23Ultra #SamsungS23Ultra. AI casually adding teeth to a 7 month old baby. NO ONE ASKED FOR THIS! pic.twitter.com/X9WUHWS2Hr
— Apricot Lennon π±π₯ (@earcity) March 22, 2023
Meanwhile, TheVerge tried doing the same with a baby pic and Samsung’s Remaster feature. The experiment didn’t go the same as the video shared by the Twitter user, possibly due to the pose of the baby in the pic. As far as the spread is concerned, there are no complaints about fake teeth by Samsung Remaster.
As anything isn’t going on automatically there, it’s not good to blame Samsung for the teeth error. Remaster feature works on images captured by Galaxy or available in the Gallery app. You need to tap the toggle to trigger the feature upscaling of images, which purely uses AI.
Next month, Samsung boss Lee Jae-yong will meet with the management of Lucid Motors in the US to discuss the battery business. According to the information, Samsung Chairman Lee is scheduled to meet with the management of Lucid Motors next month.
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It is likely that Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol will accompany on his state visit to the US on April 26 and meet at a Korea-US business roundtable. At Lucid Motors, CEO Peter Rawlinson is expected to discuss with Chairman Lee regarding the ways to cooperate with electric vehicle batteries.
Lucid Motors has used cylindrical batteries from Samsung SDI and LG Energy Solutions. From 2020, LG Energy Solutions is in charge of most of the volume, however, this contract ends in 2023. Samsung SDI can offer Lucid Motors a 46 pie (Ξ¦ 46 mm in diameter) cylindrical battery that it has decided to supply to BMW.
In particular, considering the relationship between Chairman Lee and Lucid Motors and Crown Prince bin Salman, and the recent rapid growth of the battery market, there is a possibility that the battery factory construction mentioned in 2018 will be mentioned again.
After meeting with BMW chairman Oliver Zipse in June 2022, Chairman Lee visited Samsung SDI’s Suwon plant in February 2023 to tour the all-solid-state battery test production (pilot) line and seems to be focusing on the battery business.
The all-solid-state battery piler line will be completed in the first half of the year. As Chairman Lee directly took care of the business site on this day, it is observed that Samsung’s version of the ‘battery super gap’ strategy will be in full swing.
Huawei just brought its new flagship devices to consumers in China. In addition to the P60 series, Huawei launched the Mate X3 foldable phone as an indirect competitor to the Galaxy Z Fold4. Compared to Samsung, Huawei’s foldable phone is lighter and thinner, but not better.
According to Chinese media (via Huawei Central), the Huawei Mate X3 foldable weighs just 239 grams. Besides the lightweight structural design, the smartphone mainly uses ultra-light diamond aluminum and carbon fiber bamboo books as part of weight reduction.
Compared to Huawei’s latest foldable, the Galaxy Z Fold4 is quite heavier as it weighs 263 grams. And due to the U-shaped hinge design, the Galaxy foldable becomes radically thicker than its Chinese competitors from Huawei, OPPO, and Honor.
The Mate X3 reportedly uses ultra-thin Type-C technology to move the original device shell to the middle frame to reduce thickness and make it lighter. The phone’s thickness is just 11.08mm when it is folded, and 5.3mm when it is unfolded, which is over half of its predecessor’s build.
Talking about the hinge design, the Huawei Mate X3 features a new generation of double-rotation water-drop hinge. It makes the folding and unfolding experience smoother by maintaining tougher folding reliability using a double-rotating water drop shaft with 700Mpa wing aluminum.
The Galaxy Z Fold4 is Samsung’s second-generation foldable phone, which brought an IPX8 rating for water resistance. Huawei has now also brought the water resistance feature to its 2023 foldable phone, but the next Galaxy Fold reportedly features dust resistance too.
Similar to the P60 series, the Chinese phone maker introduced a two-way satellite SMS feature for the Mate X3 smartphone as well. Moreover, there’s a BatteryCare tech that extends the battery life and keeps healthy for up to five years of continuous use.
Talking about security and reliability, Huawei Mate X3 has nothing to offer. Samsung’s Galaxy Fold phone brings industry-grade software, which keeps your data and privacy secure and the phone maker away from getting banned by the US, like Huawei.