Cyanogen’s CEO thinks Samsung’s days at the top are numbered. Photo: Cyanogen
Samsung may have just announced its best smartphones ever at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, but according to Cyanogen, Inc. CEO Kirt McMaster, that’s not going to help the company’s declining smartphone sales and falling profits.
McMaster believes that the South Korean company — and other high-end smartphone makers — will be “slaughtered” by new competition over the next five years.
If you need a smartphone camera that can capture a steady image even when you’re not, you’ll want to choose Samsung’s new Galaxy S6 over the iPhone 6. At least, that’s what the South Korean company hopes to prove with the strange, shaking display table it brought to MWC.
2014 was the year Apple took the lead against Samsung. Photo: HBO/Cult of Android
Of the smartphone stories which played out in 2014, two of the biggest were the triumph of Apple’s iPhone 6, which sold a massive 10 million+ units in its opening weekend alone, and the faltering of Samsung, which fell from the dominant position it had enjoyed since 2011.
Today, a new report from Gartner (paywall) breaks down both the 1.2 billion smartphone sales that took place worldwide last year, and also the sales from Q4 2014 — revealing how Apple leaped ahead in the smartphone category, while the South Korean tech giant Samsung started to lose its footing.
Make no mistake about it: this was the year everything changed.
Google Wallet is sticking around. Photo: Google
Google’s ready to take on Apple Pay with a new mobile payments platform called Android Pay. It will work over NFC, and it will come with an API that will allow third-party developers to integrate the service into their own Android apps.
Sense ID uses ultrasonic waves to map your fingerprint. Photo: Qualcomm
Apple’s Touch ID sensor has been the best and most reliable fingerprint scanner since it made its debut in the iPhone 5s, but competing products announced at Mobile World Congress this week could give the Cupertino company some concern.
Not only has Samsung made huge improvements to its own fingerprint sensor for the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, but Qualcomm has delivered an even more impressive alternative called Sense ID that works through aluminum, stainless steel, and more.
