06-04: Samsung Galaxy S10 is expected to equip triple rear-facing cameras as well as 3D sensors; Coolpad is open to moving Indian courts against Xiaomi over patent infringement; etc.
Chipsets
Google is allegedly working on a mid-range Pixel device powered by the newly announced Snapdragon 710, and might be aiming at the Indian market only. (GSM Arena, Pocket Lint, Anzhuo, Sohu)
NVIDIA has announced a new AI chipset—Jetson Xavier for robots. The SoC provides the processing with more than 9B transistors, it delivers over 30 TOPS (trillion operations per second). It has a Volta Tensor Core GPU, an eight-core ARM64 CPU, dual NVDLA deep learning accelerators, an image processor, a vision processor and a video processor. (TechCrunch, CN Beta, CNET, VentureBeat)
Touch Display
Choong-hoon Yi, president of UBI Research, has estimated that OLED panels for foldable smartphones would be shipped to 100,000 units in 2018, and 2.83M units would be shipped in 2022. He has also mentioned the foldable smart phone is expected to be implemented as a 5.2” display with a 7.2” display folded in half. In addition, a bar-type display is to be added to the outside to check time and other information. (OLED Net, OLED-Info)
Notch design of smartphone displays is estimated to raise manufacturing cost of display panels by more than 20%, according to IHS Markit. Manufacturing cost of the 5.9” OLED panel with notch design, as in the Apple iPhone X, is estimated to be USD29. It is found to be 25% higher than manufacturing cost of full-display OLED panel without the notch design used in the 5.8” display for the Samsung Galaxy S9. (IHS Markit, press, Sohu)
Camera
Samsung Galaxy S10 is expected to equip triple rear-facing cameras as well as 3D sensors, according to analyst from KB Securities Kim Dong-won. Analyst from Kium Securities Kim Ji-san adds that Samsung Electro-Mechanics (SEMCO) would be one of the beneficiaries of the market trend. (Android Headlines, The Investor, My Drivers)
Storage
Western Digital (WD) has renewed its calls for the Japanese government to support its memory-chip joint venture with Toshiba, as it faces a make-or-break moment in their competition with Samsung. Following a bitter legal dispute that threatened an emergency sale of Toshiba’s memory-chip unit, Toshiba Memory, to a consortium led by Bain Capital, Toshiba and Western Digital aim to halt a slide in market share with the rollout of next-generation flash memory chips made by their JV. (My Drivers, Financial Times)
Sensory
O-Film has revealed the company has begun planning for 3D sensing, and already sent out samples to Android vendors. Xiaomi Mi 8 Explore Edition Face ID is using O-Film’s 3D sensing module. Similarly, Xiaomi Mi 8 Explore Edition optical under-display fingerprint scanner is also using O-Film’s module. O-Film has indicated that the company has already planned optical and ultrasonic fingerprint scanner modules. (Laoyaoba, Sina, East Money)
Connectivity
Panasonic Corporation of North America, Qualcomm and Ford Motor Company, have announced a strategic collaboration to deploy Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) technologies. The 3 companies are working with the Colorado Department of Transportation to test C-V2X in limited areas in summer 2018. (Android Headlines, PR Newswire, San Diego Union Tribune, Sina, Xuehua)
Phone
Coolpad is open to moving Indian courts against Xiaomi over patent infringement, after Coolpad filed 7 such cases in China in 2 different courts since Jan 2018. (Laoyaoba, Tencent, India Today, Economic Times)
Microsoft has agreed to acquire GitHub, the code repository company popular with many software developers. GitHub was last valued at USD2B in 2015. (The Verge, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, 36Kr, Leiphone)
ZTE allegedly may soon pay up to USD1.7B penalty after its 15 Apr 2018 trade ban. The company is estimated to have lost around USD3B as around 25%~30% of the hardware it uses is supplied by US firms. (GSM Arena, Reuters, Reuters CN, My Drivers)
Foxconn Technology Group is looking to set up a new project in Egypt for manufacturing and exporting electrical components to major global companies. Foxconn Group’s projects in the Egyptian market are coinciding with the ministry’s current strategy to develop the engineering industry sector and turn Egypt into an electronics production and export hub to serve the Middle East and African markets. (CN Beta, Enterprise, Mubasher)
Facebook admits it had data-sharing partnerships with Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung over a period of years, granting third-party access to users’ personal data before the company made apps available on iOS and Android. Facebook has reached data-sharing deals over a period of several years with “nearly 60” device makers. (Apple Insider, NY Times, iFeng)
Automotive
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) is implementing 5-year plan for its self-driving technology. Among its product plans, the company focused on four brands: Jeep, Ram, Alfa Romeo and Maserati, saying it would electrify much of its lineup, offering new battery electrics, and move into new segments with new vehicles like a midsize Ram pickup, a three-row Grand Cherokee, and a Maserati midsize crossover. (CN Beta, CNET, Auto News)
Jaguar Land Rover is investing a GPB3.7M in developing off-road self-driving SUVs in project Cortex. The project Cortex is exploring all-terrain, all- weather autonomous capability and is the world-first ‘5D’ technology is enabling Level 4 and 5 off-road automation. (CN Beta, NDTV, Tires and Parts)
Alibaba Group-owned Cainiao Network and RoboSense has announced a new autonomous vehicle platform designed for logistics tasks called “G Plus”. The companies say that the G Plus also represents the world’s first driverless platform to utilize solid-state LiDAR technology, i.e., RoboSense’s RS-LiDAR-M1Pre. (Android Headlines, Interesting Engineering, TechNode, Sohu, EE Focus)
