Next month Samsung Electronics is planning to refresh its Series 9 line of ultra-thin notebooks and introduce new 13.3-inch and 15-inch models that are just 0.58-inch thick and offer a battery life of up to 10 hours. The incoming machines have an aluminum casing, a SuperBright Plus display, a Core i3 or i5 processor, up to 8 GB of RAM, a 128 GB or 256 GB solid state drive (for a boot time of just 9.8 seconds and a wake-from-sleep time of 1.4 seconds), a glass touchpad, and a backlit keyboard.

The 'new and improved' 13.3-inch Series 9 notebook will start at $1,399 while its 15-inch sibling will have a base price tag of $1,499.

Samsung Electronics has today unveiled a yellow colored version of the Series 7 Gamer notebook introduced last November. Said to be 'targeting young generation and lady customers', the gaming laptop comes with a Glass Flake coating that provides enhanced durability, and features a backlit keyboard, a 17.3-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) display, a 2.1 speaker system, and a knob for switching between various power modes.

The Series 7 Gamer also packs an Intel quad-core mobile processor, up to 16 GB of RAM, an optical drive, and up to a 2 TB hard drive.

At CES 2012 Samsung Electronics has revealed its plans to introduce an updated version of its Series 5 Chromebook. Coming in Q2, the 'new and improved' Chromebook swaps the Atom N570 CPU of the first iteration with a Celeron processor, but keeps the 12.1-inch non-gloss display, the 2 GB of RAM and the 16 GB SSD of its predecessor.

The Celeron-powered Series 5 Chromebooks will start at $399 for the WiFi-only model and is set to reach $449 for the 3G version.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a worldwide leader in digital consumer electronics and information technology, announced today Optical SMART Hub, the SE-208BW optical disc drive (ODD) for backing up and accessing all your media files - pictures, movies, MP3s and data files.

The new Optical SMART Hub can be accessed from your tablet, smartphone, and Smart TV and up to four devices can access simultaneously. The Optical SMART Hub helps extend the storage on devices by acting as a personal cloud. The Optical SMART Hub allows CD and DVD writing function without ever turning on a desktop or notebook. With the addition of a Samsung application, users can enable their smartphone, tablet, and PC access to the Optical Smart Hub. The app for the Samsung smartphones and tablets are available now.

Samsung Electronics America Inc., a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Corporation, today introduced the next evolution of its award-winning Central Station, the Series 7 Samsung Smart Station, as well as a redesigned Series 7 HDTV monitor for a whole-home solution. Part HD monitor, part wireless docking station, the second generation Series 7 Smart Station (CB750) builds upon the successes of its predecessor and now integrates with mobile devices in addition to notebook PCs, peripherals, network and AV, providing users with a simple and convenient way to increase productivity.

The new Series 7 HDTV monitor (TB750) includes HDTV functionality with a built-in TV tuner and integrated wireless display (WiDi) technology from Intel for added connectivity to the TB750 as well as integrations with mobile devices like smartphones and tablets for added versatility. The Series 7 Smart Station, available in 24- and 27-inch configurations, and the Series 7 HDTV monitor, available in 24- and 27-inch configurations, will be available on display during the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas at Central Hall booth #12004, January 10-13.

Next week at CES 2012, Samsung Electronics will show off for the first time its new Series 9 premium monitor, a slim and sexy widescreen called S27A970 which features a 27-inch PLS (Plane Line Switching) panel capable of a maximum resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels.

Samsung's creation also has an anti-glare edge-to-edge glass display, an aluminum stand and base, a response time of 5 ms, 178/178 degree viewing angles, a static contrast ratio of 1,000:1, a maximum brightness of 300 cd/m2, two 7 W built-in speakers, a 2-port USB 2.0 hub, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort inputs, plus a Mobile High Definition Link (MHL) enabling connectivity with MHL-supporting smartphones and tablets.

The Series 9 S27A970 is expected to become available in March priced at $1,200.

Although they've only been officially launched in South Korea (Samsung's home market), the Series 5 ultrabooks have begun to pop up in US stores, for starters, only on pre-order. Both the 13.3-inch and 14-inch Series 5 models can be found listed, with the former bring priced at $899.99 and the latter at $949.99.

Both versions of Samsung's ultrabook run Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and feature an aluminum chassis, an LED-backlit display, a 1.6 GHz Core i5-2467M processor, 4 GB of RAM, Intel HD 3000 graphics, a 500 GB hard drive backed by 16 GB of flash storage, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, a 4-in-1 card reader, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, stereo speakers, and a 4-cell battery. The 14-inch Series 5 ultrabook also comes with a built-in DVD writer.

First shown to the world at the IFA 2011 event in Berlin in September, Samsung's Series 7 CHRONOS premium notebook will be launched in Korea, next month. Apart from its sleek aluminum body, the CHRONOS packs a punch, thanks to quad-core Core i7 "Sandy Bridge" processor, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD, and Samsung's Fast Starter technology (similar to Diskeeper's Express Cache). Its 15.6-inch screen sports a 1600x900 pixels resolution, and packs a proprietary panel technology that provides up to 300 nit brightness. Its pricing will range from 1,790,000 to 2,000,000 Won (US $1,545 to $1,726), depending on its configuration. With it, Samsung wants to tap into the premium market in its home country.

Five major LCD panel makers, including Samsung, Sharp, Hitachi, HannStar, and Chimei Innolux; agreed to pay over US $553 million in settlement to regulators for a price-fixing case. The case by regulators alleged that these companies colluded to fix prices of LCD panels 1999 and 2006, affecting billions of dollars of commerce. The scam unearthed in 2006, by regulators of Japan, Korea, United States, and the European Union. Many companies and executives have since pleaded guilty to criminal antitrust violations and paid more than US $890 million in fines so far.

The latest payout of $553 million is aimed to resolve claims by "indirect" purchasers that bought televisions and computers with thin film transistor LCDs, as well as claims by eight USA states: Arkansas, California, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, New York, West Virginia and Wisconsin. It also includes payments of $14.7 million by the companies to settle civil fine and penalty law claims by the states, the office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said. He stated "This price-fixing scheme manipulated the playing field for businesses that abide by the rules, and left consumers to pay artificially higher costs for televisions, computers and other electronics."

VR-Zone have been having a little chat with Intel 'sources', who have leaked some juicy tidbits for us to enjoy in the form performance and power news. The upcoming next generation Medfield platform is Intel's first true System on a Chip (SoC) and is designed to compete with various low power ARM offerings in the tablet space. To help achieve this, they've gone through an internal restructure, merging four business units into just one: Ultra-Mobility, Mobile Wireless, Mobile Communications and Netbook & Tablet PC. The business unit is now simply known as Mobile and Communications. It's being run by Mike Bell and Hermann Eul and the first product to emerge from it will be is the 32 nm Medfield SoC solution.

VR-Zone explained that the competition will be "Apple's A-Series, NVIDIA Tegra, Qualcomm Snapdragon, Samsung Exynos, Texas Instruments OMAP and the likes. Out of all the chips mentioned above, only Samsung's Exynos is currently manufactured in 32nm process, just like Medfield."

Japanese mobile operator NTT DOCOMO has today announced the upcoming formation of a fabless joint venture company that will focus on the development of "feature-rich, small-size, low-power-consumption semiconductor products equipped with modem functionality."

Allegedly targeting Qualcomm, this new joint venture, which will be established by the end of March 2012, is set to be backed by NTT DOCOMO (of course), Samsung Electronics, Panasonic Mobile Communications, NEC, Fujitsu and Fujitsu Semiconductor. This six-company JV will start off by making chips for the LTE and LTE-Advanced mobile communication standards. Said chips will be available worldwide so a variety of manufacturers can adopt them for future devices.

To get the ball rolling on the joint venture, DOCOMO wants to invest 450 million yen (~ US $5.8 million) into a new, wholly owned subsidiary, called Communication Platform Planning. This entity will be headed by Mitsunobu Komori who's the executive vice president and Chief Technical Officer of DOCOMO. The subsidiary will be established by the middle of January.

Sony Corporation ("Sony") and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. ("Samsung") today announced that the two companies have signed agreements to transition the current business relationship with respect to LCD panels.

Under the agreement, Samsung will acquire all of Sony's shares of S-LCD Corporation ("S-LCD"), the two companies' LCD panel manufacturing joint venture, making S-LCD a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung. In consideration for the share transfer, cash consideration of approximately KRW 1.08 trillion* will be paid to Sony by Samsung. Concurrently, the two companies have entered into a new strategic agreement for the supply and purchase of LCD panels with a goal of enhancing the competitiveness of both companies. The agreement also allows Sony and Samsung to continue cooperative engineering efforts focused on LCD panel technology.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced results of operations for its first quarter of fiscal 2012, which ended December 1, 2011. For the first quarter, the company had a net loss attributable to Micron shareholders of $187 million, or $0.19 per diluted share, on net sales of $2.1 billion. The results for the first quarter of fiscal 2012 compare to a net loss of $135 million, or $0.14 per diluted share, on net sales of $2.1 billion for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2011, and net income of $155 million, or $0.15 per diluted share, on net sales of $2.3 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2011.

The company's consolidated gross margin remained at 15 percent for the first quarter of fiscal 2012. Improvements in NAND Flash margins were offset by declines in DRAM. Revenue from sales of NAND Flash products was 6 percent higher in the first quarter of fiscal 2012 compared to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2011 due to an 18 percent increase in sales volume partially offset by a 10 percent decrease in average selling prices. Revenue from sales of DRAM products was essentially unchanged in the first quarter of fiscal 2012 compared to the previous quarter, as a 14 percent increase sales volume was offset by a 12 percent decrease in average selling prices. Sales of NOR Flash products were approximately 14 percent of total net sales for the first quarter of fiscal 2012.

Seagate Technology has today announced that it completed the acquisition of Samsung Electronics' hard drive unit. Worth $1.4 billion, this deal covers the assets, infrastructure and employees of Samsung's HDD business and is supposed to boost Seagate's production capacity, R&D strength and customer access in China, Southeast Asia, Brazil, Germany and the Russian Federation.

As part of the agreement, Seagate will be supplying HDDs for Samsung PCs, notebooks and consumer electronics devices, while the South Korean giant will provide Seagate with semiconductor products needed for enterprise solid state drives (SSDs), solid-state hybrid drives and other products. Moreover, the two companies have signed an extended patent cross-license agreement, and have agreed to collaborate on the development of enterprise storage solutions.

Panasonic Corporation, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., SanDisk Corporation, Sony Corporation and Toshiba Corporation today announced that they have reached an agreement in principle to collaborate on a new content protection technology for flash memory cards such as SD Cards and various storage devices. Under the "Next Generation Secure Memory Initiative," the five companies will start preparing for licensing and promotion of HD (high-definition)-capable security for SD Cards and embedded memory for use in advanced consumer applications such as tablets and smartphones.

This content protection solution will be robust enough to protect HD content. A high level of content security will be realized through the use of the initiative's technologies, including unique ID (identification) technology for flash memory and robust copy protection based on public key infrastructure.

These are some lively times at Apple's legal department. The company is locked in intellectual property disputes with multiple companies, in multiple countries. Some of these are familiar foes such as Motorola Mobility and Samsung, others regional and lesser-known. The one thing patent disputes do, to all parties involved in them, is dent PR. Every legal dispute attracts or at lease leaves scope for bad press, and more often shapes public opinion against the disputing parties.

Apple learned a new trick in the trade which at least two recent events with very different outcomes, may have helped shape. First, it recently thwarted display IP infringement claims by S3 Graphics thanks to timely help by GPU supplier AMD, and second, it suffered a setback with regards to some brand names claimed by Chinese company ProView. You see, the ups and downs of IP disputes can have some very varied effects on the company's image. Apple's new trick is simple: make a different company, with a much different brand name, to handle those IP disputes on behalf of Apple, so brand Apple isn't directly dragged into the mess. Enter your friendly neighbourhood patent-troll, Digitude.

Today Samsung Electronics unveiled the Series 5 Ultra, a 'high-performance' ultrabook which will debut in South Korea at the end of this month and will probably (hopefully) reach other markets in early 2012.

This new mobile solution makes use of an aluminum chassis, comes in 13.3-inch and 14-inch versions (the 13-inch model is 14.9 mm thick, the 14-inch is 20.9 mm), and features a yet unnamed Intel processor, up to 8GB of RAM, a 500GB/1TB hard drive or a 128GB solid state drive, and 8GB of ExpressCache memory which ensures lower boot and access times (Samsung claims that its machine can come out of sleep mode in under 2 seconds). The 14-inch unit boasts a Radeon HD 7550M discrete graphics card and an optical drive while the 13.3-inch model has to settle for an integrated Intel GPU and no ODD.

The Series 5 Ultra also has WiFi, a webcam, two USB 3.0 ports, and both D-Sub and HDMI outputs. Pricing in Korea is said to range from about US $1,121 to US $1,339.

In a development that threatens to prevent Apple's European sales arm from selling 3G-enabled iPad and iPhone products, Motorola Mobility won an injunction against it in Germany. On the table was a key Motorola patent related to cellular data transmission, which is part of wireless data transmission standards that are obstructed by an agreement to license it on "fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory" (FRAND) terms.

Motorola claimed that Apple was infringing this patent, to which, Apple responded by putting up a FRAND defense (counter-accusing the patent-holder of not being fair/reasonable/non-discriminatory with licensing a patent that makes up an industry standard. The court ruling in Germany stated that raising a FRAND defense against standards-essential patent infringement claims could be a difficult proposition, and may force Apple to accept Motorola's licensing terms-FRAND or not-for "past infringement." Apple won similar FRAND defenses against Samsung, in the past, in other European countries such as The Netherlands and France.

Windows (PC) will make its first transition to a machine architecture other than x86 in decades with Windows 8 Windows on ARM (WOA), and Microsoft wants to make absolutely sure that it has a well-oiled ecosystem in place to propel its growth. Currently, Microsoft picked three potent players among ARM processor vendors, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments (that have experience and can ship in Zerg volumes), and NVIDIA (which has demonstrated a lot of engineering potential with its latest Tegra products).

Microsoft reportedly asked the three ARM players to pick two notebook vendors each (one major, and one minor) with which they will work to develop some of the first WOA portable computing devices. Qualcomm selected Samsung and Sony, Texas Instruments chose Toshiba and Samsung, while NVIDIA chose Acer and Lenovo. Among these, Samsung, Toshiba, and Lenovo are the major partners. Surprisingly, Taiwan-based companies have an insignificant role in this ecosystem. ASUS, which has thus far been the largest client of NVIDIA for Tegra processors, has been left out. Now that downstream partners are selected, upstream ODMs such as Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics, Wistron and Pegatron Technology, which manufacture for those companies, are getting their R&D teams in shape to compete for the next-generation platform. The finishing line of ARM's marathon run to get into PCs is in sight.

Flash memory major Samsung announced plans to build a new flash memory plant in China to meet growing demands by mobile computing device manufacturers in the coming years. The new manufacturing plant will be built at a cost of over US $4 billion, Samsung hopes it will fuel the $22 billion flash memory industry's growth next year. When operationalised, the new flash memory plant will be Samsung's second outside South Korea.

The NAND flash memory industry is seeing exceptional growth at 20%, it will be worth $26 billion next year. President of Samsung's memory business, Jun Dong-soo, said in a statement "[The new factory] will enable us to meet fast growing demand from our customers and at the same time strengthen our overall competitiveness in the memory industry."

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a global leader in advanced semiconductor technology solutions, announced volume production of SSDs (solid state drives) that support the Mini-Serial ATA (mSATA) interface. The drives are designed for use in ultra-slim notebooks such as Ultrabook PCs.

"Samsung's compact mSATA SSDs will provide performance of the highest quality in helping to deliver the advanced ultra-slim PCs that consumers have been wanting," said Myungho Kim, vice president of memory marketing, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics. "Samsung plans to continue providing timely delivery of advanced SSD solutions, while preserving its leadership position in the SSD market for notebook PCs."

Just in time for holiday giving, Samsung is introducing a Piano Black version of its WiFi-only Series 5 Chromebook. At a price of $349, the updated Series 5 is even more giftable than the original.

Chromebook, based on Google's Chrome operating system, is designed to provide people a faster, simpler and more secure computing experience. Due to automatic software updates, Google has continued to release new features and improvements on an ongoing basis. These new features coupled with the Samsung design aesthetic creates a technology device that gets better over time, offering the best possible web experience in one device for the internet-enthusiasts in all our lives.

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, the global leader in the development of standards for the microelectronics industry, today announced its participation in the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, on January 12. CES, produced by the Consumer Electronics Association, is the preeminent showcase for the worldwide consumer electronics industry. JEDEC's partner program, Memory Matters: Memory Solutions for Consumer Products and Mobile Devices, will explore how technological advancements and new standards can enhance device performance, reduce power usage and enable compact form factors.

Ever-increasing expectations for device speed and performance, as well as the trend towards smaller form factors, are driving the need for versatile memory solutions. Speakers from Agilent, CST, Micron and Samsung will highlight leading-edge memory solutions for next-generation mobile applications, a new generation of low-power memories for smartphones and tablets, and much more.

Rambus is the company best known for suing dozens of companies over memory patents that it holds and is suing so prolifically, that many just see this company as a patent troll. It has been accused many times of obtaining submarine patents while a member of the JEDEC group until a decade ago, which it is now fraudulently using to try and extort royalties from every other company using DDR memory and its derivatives. Unfortunately, those lawsuits didn't stick, encouraging Rambus to carry on enthusiastically. Rambus won patent fights against NVIDIA and Samsung for example, who now have to pay them ongoing royalties. However, it looks like Rambus may have bitten off more than it could chew, because it has just lost a $4 billion antitrust lawsuit against Micron Technology Inc and Hynix Semiconductor Inc, erasing more than half of the chipmaker's value as investors abandoned its stock in droves. Rambus stock immediately plunged more than 60% on this good news.

The current display technology standard for most PCs and TVs is LCD nowadays. However, LCD technology has significant and well known drawbacks, such as limited viewing angles, poor colours, motion blur and input lag. These problems cause some people to swear by and hold on to the old and now obsolete CRT monitors, as it had none of these problems (it did however, have lots of others). There are various types of LCD technology in mainstream use today which attempt to address these shortcomings, but none fix them all. For example, TN displays are cheap to buy, relatively fast which reduces motion smear and input lag, but at the expense of viewing angle and colour accuracy, making them suitable for fast gaming and animation. Meanwhile, IPS displays have the opposite characteristics, making them suitable for professional photographic work, where accurate colours and vibrant pictures are essential.