Galaxy S iii – In a surprising development, sales of the Samsung Galaxy S3 actually increased during two major events that analysts would expect to hurt Galaxy sales: the Apple lawsuit verdict against Samsung and the much ballyhooed release of the new Apple iPhone 5.
While the Samsung Galaxy S3 has seen a steady weekly growth of about 9 percent for the past two months, sales jumped 16 percent after a California jury found Samsung guilty of patent infringement and ordered the Korean company to pay Apple more than $1 billion in damages.
Similarly, on the week that Apple held its big launch of the iPhone 5, sales of the Samsung Galaxy S3 jumped 15 percent. Analysts suggested that customers may have been moved by news that the Samsung product is so similar to the Apple that it would prompt a big jury verdict—and also fears that Apple might succeed in getting a ban of Samsung products, as it sought after the jury verdict.
Potential Apple customers also may have been waiting for the iPhone 5 release to see which one they should buy—and many ultimately chose Samsung Galaxy.
But Samsung may have some exciting news of its own for customers next week, as the company sent out an invitation to the German tech press to an announcement on Oct. 11 in Frankfurt, Germany, that has tech experts abuzz.
The wording on the invitation says that “something small will be really big” or that attendees should be “ready for a little sensation”—leading experts such as Mobiflip to speculate that the company will be introducing a smaller version of the Galaxy S3 that may be similar in size to the iPhone 5. According to the site Boy Genius Report, the rumors are that the Mini will have a 4-inch screen, the exact same size as the iPhone 5 screen—countering complaints in some quarters about the Galaxy S3’s screen being too large.
In some more good news for Samsung, a company that needs as much of it as it can get, the Samsung Galaxy S3 loads Web pages 9 percent faster over the LTE network than the new iPhone 5, according to tests conducted by Strangeloop Networks.
But the iPad 2 loaded Web pages a startling 22 percent faster than the Samsung Galaxy tablet over a 3G wireless network.
In a straight comparison of LTE vs. 3G, Strangeloop found that LTE was 27 percent faster than 3G—an impressive number, until you are reminded that most carriers claim LTE is 10 times faster than 3G. Not even close, according to Strangeloop’s tests.
