Stories of companies that were able to become leaders in such a highly competitive market as
The world's first MP3 player phone: Samsung SPH-M2100
It is generally accepted that the first telephone withthe built-in MP3 player was a Siemens SL45, but this is not the case. Samsung SPH-M2100 was released in South Korea a year earlier, in August 1999. It had 16 megabytes of memory, allowing you to store 4 songs or up to 20 minutes of speech recording. A month later, a version with 32 megabytes was released. The phone, 19 millimeters thick, was considered thin, weighed 94 grams and was equipped with an external remote control (with its own display) that allowed you to switch songs and answer calls. The first Samsung phone with MP3, which was sold not only in South Korea, but also in the United States, was the SPH-M2500 model, and 5 years later there were already 60 models with MP3 support in the South Korean market alone. Nowadays these features make you smile, but twenty years ago MP3 was a relatively new technology and this phone was created even before the widespread spread of this format and the advent of MP3 players. Usually history is written by the winners, but we remember that people and companies were thinking about how to give users a digital portable device with music long before Steve Jobs, who gave the world the iPod.
</ img>
The world's first phone in a watch: Samsung SPH-WP10
Even today, another device comes from 1999year looks fantastic. This is a Samsung SPH-WP10 CDMA phone built into the watch. It has an external antenna and a graphic monochrome display with a resolution of 128x64 pixels. It was sold only in South Korea (even then, in not the most developed country in the world at that time, it is not surprising that 20 years later, 5th generation mobile communication networks were among the first to appear in this country). Even today, not all smartwatches are equipped with a mobile communication module (let's be honest - the number of such models is very limited). And although this device did not make a huge breakthrough and did not receive recognition from buyers all over the world (like, for example, flip phones, the creators of which were inspired by communicators from Star Trek), it turned science fiction and the dream of future technologies from comics about detective Dick Tracy, who used similar watches into reality. Even then, Samsung began to think about segmenting the market for mobile communication devices and was looking for new categories of users. The result in the form of leadership in the global telephone market came only a decade later, but it was there.
</ img>
</ img>
Curious fact © Sheldon Cooper
Samsung is a global leader not only insmartphone production. The company is the No. 1 player in the market of TVs, refrigerators, memory (DRAM, NAND Flash and SSD), and also produces SIM cards and Digital Signage (large monitors for displaying advertising placed in public places) more than anyone else in the world.
The one and only - a special phone from The Matrix: Samsung SPH N270
Everyone remembers the phone from the cult film "The Matrix"1999, but Samsung in 2003 went further and developed for the premiere of the sequel “Matrix: Reboot” a special model of the Samsung SPH N270 mobile phone that could be bought. It was a phone directly associated with the film, it had a unique inimitable design with a jumping module. The only thing that upset (and continues to upset now, otherwise we would have met people with such a phone so far on the streets) is that the model was developed only for CDMA networks. But the main goal that the developers set for themselves - to give users a phone from the cyberpunk future and to show how tomorrow's technologies can already be available today - has been achieved. The phone immediately became a cult right after the movie.
</ img>
For those who want to know more
The Matrix is by no means the only film wherecan meet Samsung products. The company's devices appeared in films about the avengers from the Marvel universe, “Kingsmen” and “Lucy”, a separate role on the Samsung phone was in the film “Ocean's Thirteen Friends”. And they can also be seen in the popular series "Mr. Robot", "Silicon Valley", "House of Cards", "Breaking Bad." And this is not a complete list.
</ img>
</ img>
</ img>
</ img>
</ img>
</ img>
</ img>
Images from films and TV shows: productplacementblog.com
The world's first phone with a Super AMOLED screen: Samsung S8500 Wave
If you sincerely believe that Samsung engineerswork like Apple, that is, they only know how to skillfully package inventions made by someone else into their devices, then I have an argument for you that proves the exact opposite. And its name is Super AMOLED screens, completely developed within the company, representing technological superiority in its purest form (they greatly help the company maintain market share in the face of extremely aggressive actions of competitors around the world). In 2010, the Super AMOLED screen simply had no equal in brightness, and the first phone equipped with such a screen was the Samsung S8500 Wave, which was remarkable in every sense. Over the past decade, the technology has constantly improved and Samsung still does not give anyone access to it. You need such goodness yourself, as the famous fairy tale said.
The world's first camera with Instagram: Samsung Galaxy Camera EK-GC100
In 2012, Samsung introduced a uniquedevice - Android camera. It had all the features of an Android smartphone that we are used to today except… SIM cards. For the first time, this made it possible to take good quality pictures using the 21x optical zoom and publish pictures on social networks - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, opening up a new mobile photography experience. Today these opportunities seem very ordinary to us, but 7 years ago the world was completely different. And smartphone cameras could only take good pictures in daylight. Read our impressions of its use in those years: “a very charming, very functional toy for geeks”, “a camera with Dropbox and Instagram? give me two!” - in those days it caused pure delight, the aftertaste of which we see today in the form of magnificent smartphone cameras, which have become an order of magnitude more compact, but carry all those magnificent opportunities born in 2012.
For those who want to know more: a design that fills devices with new meanings
In addition to Samsung technology solutionsexperiments with forms, creating new meanings and giving new scenarios for use to already familiar things. Examples of such a design are, for example, the line of Samsung Space monitors, which free up work space on the desk due to the thoughtful design of the monitor leg and a completely rethought approach to using a computer monitor at work. Or the new series of TVs The Frame and The Serif, in which design and a beautiful idea are at the forefront - why not turn the huge black spot of a switched off TV on the wall into part of the interior, making it an interactive screen, which fully corresponds to the spirit of a modern, rich visual information of the world.
</ img>
</ img>
</ img>
The world's first flexible folding screen smartphone: Samsung Galaxy Fold
This year's most technologically advanced product, promisingA breakthrough in the technologically stagnating smartphone market is the Galaxy Fold model with a folding flexible screen. By the way, Samsung plans to officially supply it to the Ukrainian market in order to demonstrate its technological capabilities to as many people as possible (we are not only talking about hundreds or thousands of buyers, but also about hundreds of thousands of people who will be able to get acquainted with it in Samsung branded showrooms). For the first time in many years, we have the opportunity to get fundamentally new technology in screens that allow us to gain new, previously unseen opportunities - a smartphone in its unfolded state will be able to replace a tablet, and provide the advantages of both devices (compactness and a large, easy-to-use tablet with multi-window mode) at once.
</ img>
The world's first refrigerator with IP cameras: Samsung Family Hub
This is a magnificent device, as if it came fromus from science fiction films, speaks of the advent of a new era in which computers have come to all areas of our lives. Screens, microprocessors and total Internet access (hello, Internet of Things, you're already a reality!) are appearing in a huge number of devices that were never designed for such use cases. The Samsung Family Hub refrigerator, unveiled at CES 2019, features not only a huge vertical screen, but also three built-in cameras that allow you to see its contents on your smartphone. Who among us has not dreamed of such an opportunity, trying in vain in the supermarket to remember the contents of our own refrigerator, the stocks of which need to be replenished? Today this is becoming a reality, and in 10 years, reading such a text, we will begin to wonder what exactly made us delighted in 2019. Well, a refrigerator with a camera and a refrigerator. The same as millions of others standing in our houses and apartments. This is exactly the path that technology takes over the course of a decade, transforming from a high-tech novelty into a useful technique that improves our daily lives. Filling it with new impressions and opportunities.
</ img>
What's next: robots, artificial intelligence and unmanned vehicles
Special project
Artificial Intelligence on TVs: How It Works
Where will technology take us in the future?No one can answer this question today. But Samsung considers promising developments related to artificial intelligence (the Bixby voice assistant, on which great hopes are pinned), the Internet of things (a lot of the most familiar household appliances have access to the network and the ability to work in conjunction with each other, for example, you can give a command refrigerator to start cooking the dish in the oven). Samsung sees very high potential in autonomous cars that can drive without a driver (and the safe movement of such vehicles around the city will become possible with the advent of 5G, the company’s engineers are also involved in the development of standards). It is also obvious that robots will appear in our future very soon - specialized assistants to perform functions related to serving people in hotels, airports and social events. And the transformation of all these devices from ahead of their time into technology familiar to everyone will happen before our eyes.
</ img>
</ img>
</ img>
For those who want to know more
- Samsung: 50 years of innovation - how the company completely changed the life of all mankind
- How design is changing our workplace: a visual guide
- In search of new meanings: why did Samsung turn the The Frame and The Serif TVs into paintings
- What happened to the Samsung Galaxy S10? Test your memory in a boring test
- Who needs bending Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X smartphones and why their price should not surprise you