Samsung Electronics will concentrate its ongoing efforts to strengthen Blu-ray products since Toshiba virtually pulled the plug on its HD DVD products.

Samsung is expected to show more interests in Blu-ray products than rival HD DVDs

the company said on Sunday. Samsung officials have declined to further comment. The Korean electronics firm has currently been developing dual-format Blu-ray and HD DVD movie players such as the UP5000, but according to experts it will now focus on Blu-ray only with no plans to phase out any combo players.

Samsung, which has been adopting a dual-strategy for both Blu-ray and HD DVD products, is likely to cut the HD DVD portion because of aggressive marketing and closer industry connections over the technology

a market expert said.

Samsung Electronics announced today that it has begun mass producing of 64GB solid state drives (SSDs) utilizing the SATA 3Gb/s data interface. Some of you may be more familiar with the word SATA II, but SATA II and SATA 3Gb/s are two different terms and I prefer to stick with the right one - SATA 3Gb/s. Back on the story, Samsung said its 64GB SATA 3Gb/s SSD, which began shipping in limited quantities earlier this month, will be available as an option within the next few weeks in selected Dell and Alienware notebooks. Able to read data at 100MB per second and write data at 80MB per second, Samsung's new SSD is up to 60% faster than SATA I (1.5Gb/s) drives and performs two to five times faster than conventional hard disk drives (HDDs), according to the company. It also consumes nearly 75% less power than typical HDDs (1.45W compared to 2.1W) and at 73 grams, SSDs are much lighter than HDDs. The SATA II SSD is comprised primarily of single-level-cell NAND flash memory.

Samsung's slate of Blu-ray players have been plagued with issues essentially from day one, and while it has released a flurry of firmware updates over the years in an attempt to mend a variety of incompatibility issues, even its recent BD-UP5000 hybrid player is being axed early on after giving owners all sorts of fits. Apparently, one particular buyer isn't taking things lying down, and has decided to file suit against the mega-corp alleging that it has sold "defective Blu-ray players" to consumers. According to the suit, Sammy was "fully aware of the defective nature of the player [BD-P1200, in particular] at the time of manufacture and sale," and it also claims that the firm has "failed to provide a remedy consistent with the products' intended and represented uses." More specifically, the verbiage picks on the units' inability to play back select BD titles, and while some fixes have indeed been doled out, we still get the feeling many consumers have been left dissatisfied. Needless to say, this outcome should be interesting.

LaCie has gotten hold of Samsung's 1.3" HDDs, and by adding a rather convenient USB interface, they have created a truly pocket size HDD capable of storing up to 40GB of data. The LaCie Little Disk is available in both 30 and 40GB versions, costing $130 and $160 respectively, and comes with a 2 year guarantee.The second Spinpoint A1-boasting product from LaCie is the USB Key Max, which is even smaller and more portable. These advantages do come at a cost though, as it is slower. The 30GB Orange Key Max costs $120 while the 40GB Black version has a price tag of $150.

Samsung unveiled its new line of LCD monitors this week at the Macworld Conference in San Francisco. The SyncMaster 2493HM and SyncMaster 2693HM are both 1920x1200 resolution displays with 4-way adjustable stands, built-in speakers and a 5ms GTG response time. The SyncMaster 2493HM is a 24-inch display which features 10,000:1 (dynamic) contrast ratio, 400 cd/m2 brightness, 160-degree viewing angles and DVI/HDMI inputs. The 25.5-inch 2693HM shares the same above specs, but with lower dynamic contrast ratio down to 3,000:1. Both monitors are available at this moment for $599 and $699, respectively.

Samsung has announced that it has paved the way for laptops to come with upto 1TB hard drives following an announcement at CES in Las Vegas. The South Korean company has announced the development of its new Spinpoint M6 500GB hard drive, the world's first 500GB 2.5-inch hard drive that fits in the industry's standard 9.5mm height dimension of laptops. The announcement comes just a few days after Hitachi Ltd. announced it will be introducing a 500 GB laptop hard drive in February. Samsung's new Spinpoint M6 500GB consists of three 166GB platters spinning at 5400rpm. The M6 drives will feature 8MB cache, and 3.0Gbps SATA interface. Samsung's Spinpoint M6 500 GB hard drive is scheduled to launch in March this year.

Samsung Electronics also announced today its new F1 RAID Class 3.5" SATA hard drive featuring 1TB of capacity specifically designed and manufactured for enterprise storage and surveillance applications. Offering the world's highest recording density using only three platters and running at 7,200rpm, the F1R drive is designed for demanding applications such as database, email servers, web servers, super computing, software development, data warehousing, surveillance, call center and nearline/backup storage systems.

Two months after Samsung announced its new SATA II-based 64GB solid-state disk (SSD), the firm is now doubling the capacity of its latest SATA II SSD offering to 128GB. The newly developed multi-level cell (MLC) flash-based 128 Gigabyte (GB) solid state drive (SSD) will hit mass production this year in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch versions for notebook and desktop PCs, as well as other mobile applications. The new drive offers a data reading speed of 100MB/s and writing speed of 70MB/s, the industry's highest for MLC-based SSDs. Samsung's 128GB SSD will be demonstrated in a notebook PC at CES 2008. The complete suite of Samsung SSDs will also be displayed at Samsung Electronics' Booth 11033, in the LVCC's Central Hall. Information regarding this product and other Samsung news at CES is available online here.

Samsung Electronics said on Friday it had agreed with Hitachi Ltd's data storage business unit to a license deal over hard disk drive (HDD) patents. Samsung, the world's largest maker of memory chips, said in a filing with the Korea Exchange that the agreement with Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Inc covers HDD patents by International Business Machines Corp (IBM) and Hitachi. Japanese electronics conglomerate Hitachi bought IBM's disk drive operations in 2002 for $2 billion. Samsung did not provide details of the licensed patents. Along with the agreement, Samsung and Hitachi would drop patent suits they have filed against each other, Samsung said. Hitachi had sued Samsung in December 2006 and Samsung filed a countersuit in March 2007, a Samsung spokesman said.

The new Spinpoint M6 HM320JI is the highest capacity 2.5-inch hard drive in Samsung's laptop storage products, offering 320GB of data space. The M6 features Free-Fall Sensor that protects data from accidental drops and includes an optional Rotary Vibration Controller that minimizes the influence of external vibration. The disk has 5,400rpm spindle speed, 1.5Gbps SATA interface and 8MB data buffer. The Spinpoint M6 HM320JI is available now, with a MSRP of $249.

Samsung Electronics is unloading its graphics memory inventory by offering prices that are much lower than competitors' production costs for the segment. DigiTimes claims that Samsung 256Mb (16Mbx16) DDR2 is selling for only US$0.50. Other DRAM makers think that the price is unbelievably low, as typical costs for this type of DDR2 graphics memory chip, from the wafer to back-end production, would usually run about US$1.40. Samsung's low-price move for graphics memory comes as a further blow to Taiwan's DRAM makers, which are already suffering from plunging prices in the commodity DRAM market. Graphics memory provides higher margins than commodity DRAM, but Samsung's move may now trigger a free fall for graphics memory prices. Samsung did not comment on the story.

Samsung Electronics America Inc., a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Corporation, today announced the release of its new 8" Digital Photo Frame SPF-83V, based on technology developed by Microsoft Research, in time for the holiday season. With this innovative addition to their photo frame lineup, customers can enjoy photos wirelessly in their home and display photos from sharing sites such as Windows Live Spaces or from personal collections on their PC.

In an email announcing its CES meeting plans, Samsung Semiconductor has unveiled plans to showcase the world's first 1.3-inch hard drive at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. The drive is being targeted at "mobile consumer devices". Samsung will also show:

• 1TB RAID Edition hard drives
• New 320GB mobile hard drives for notebooks
• TruDirect optical disk-drive tech that eliminates the need for a hard drive when burning disks
• Touchscreen LCDs
• HDTV innovations, such as Motion Picture Frame Interpolation and Local Dimming LED technology (which Samsung says will offer contrast ratios 20k to 50k that of high-end CCFL panels lit by bulbs)

Samsung Electronics and Toshiba announced today that they have signed a cross-license deal to produce, market and sell memory with the specifications and trademarks of Samsung's OneNAND and Toshiba's LBA-NAND memory chips. The arrangement is expected to result in increased availability of premium-performance OneNAND and LBA-NAND flash devices worldwide. Under the terms of the agreement, Samsung will license product specifications of its integrated OneNAND and Flex-OneNAND "fusion" memory chips to Toshiba, while Toshiba will license product specifications of its single-package LBA-NAND and mobileLBA-NAND flash chips to Samsung. Both companies will develop and market products that are compatible with the respective original-source technology. Samsung and Toshiba each plan to release products next year based on the respectively licensed product specifications, according to the companies.

Samsung Electronics has announced that it has developed the world's fastest memory, a GDDR5 (series five, graphics double-data-rate memory) chip that can transfer data at six gigabits per second (Gbps). Samsung's GDDR5, which will be introduced at a density of 512 Mb (16Mb x 32) chips, is capable of transmitting moving images and associated data at 24 gigabytes per second (GBps). The new Samsung graphics memory operates at 1.5 volts, representing an approximate 20% improvement in power consumption over today's most popular graphics chip, the GDDR3. Samples of Samsung's new GDDR5 chip have been delivered to major graphic processor companies last month and mass production is expected in the first half of 2008. Samsung expects that GDDR5 memory chips will become standard in the top performing segment of the market by capturing more than 50% of the high-end PC graphics market by 2010.

Back in June, Samsung first introduced their 1TB storage devices, but until yesterday the company's F1 1TB hard drives weren't available for purchase. Shipping now the F1 drives use the highest density platters around (334GB per platter) which spin at 7,200 rpm and use perpendicular magnetic recording technology. The 3.5" hard drives have a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, boast 32MB of data buffer and consume about 6.7 watts in idle mode and an average of 7.2 watts while seeking your data. The 1TB Samsung F1's have a suggested retail price of $399.

Samsung announced today that it has a new display that can run at resolutions of up to 3072 x 3072. This display is a flat panel X-ray detector (FPXD) for use in X-ray machines. The uses for the display extend well beyond medical purposes according to Samsung. As games and graphics hardware continue to advance, the old 2560 x 1600 resolution is becoming obsolete to hard-core avid gamers. This new monitor will allow gamers to take their game to the next level with ultra high-resolution graphics. Aside from gaming, Samsung also envisions the FPXD display being used in traditional X-ray systems, CAT scan machines, for building inspections and in airport security systems.

According to DigiTimes, Samsung Electronics could potentially bring about a fundamental change in the branded memory card market as the chip supplier is said to start marketing its own branded memory modules - at which point it may also start selling less memory chips to third party memory card makers in Taiwan. Samsung will target the Samsung-brand memory cards for handset customers first, but may introduce the memory cards to the retail market in the future. Handsets customers from Europe will be the first to take up the Samsung-brand memory cards. In order to meet the potential reduction in supply from Samsung, memory card makers in Taiwan are aggressively securing relationships with other major chipmakers. A-Data Technology and Power Quotient International (PQI) are strengthening ties with Hynix Semiconductor, whereas Transcend Information is extending its relationship with Hynix and Intel.

Samsung Electronics has become the first in the industry to sample 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch 64GB solid state drives (SSD) with a super-fast native SATA II interface. With a sequential write speed of 100MB/s and sequential read speed of 120MB/s, the SATA II SSD is poised to expand the market for solid state drives from notebook PCs to corporate servers and other high-performance storage applications. Samsung's SATA II SSD combines a 50 nm-class, single-level-cell (SLC) 8Gb flash chip with a Samsung proprietary, high-speed SATA controller and supporting software.

The 64GB SATA II SSD is based on Samsung's cutting-edge NAND technology with dramatically improved performance specs that are taking system performance to a whole new level of efficiency

said Jim Elliott, director, NAND flash marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.

When a manufacturer wants to make an LCD television or monitor, they take glass, pour fancy chemicals on in, heat it to 300 degrees centigrade, and remove all alkaline. However, this glass is none too cheap: ¥6122 ($53/£26/€37) per square meter. Samsung recently found a possible alternative. By using a new process that they won't go into great details about, Samsung has managed to make LCD television glass out of the same stuff that beer bottles and windows are made of: soda-lime glass. The main scientific advance that allows Samsung to do this is a temperature reduction in the production of glass, preventing the discoloring of glass that would ordinarily occur with soda-lime glass. If Samsung puts this in production, their LCD products would be approximately 6% cheaper according to analysts: a huge advantage when compared to the competition.

Samsung has developed the world's first 64 Gigabit (Gb) multi level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chip -- using 30-nanometer (nm)-class process technology. The flash memory device represents a major leap forward in the move to higher density flash storage solutions at a time of exploding demand for flash as the main storage medium in computing and other digital applications.

Samsung Electronics has developed three new LCDs for notebook PCs - two offering a true 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio for viewing movies, TV shows and new-age gaming, while the third featuring active White-LED (light-emitting diode) backlighting that boosts picture clarity and reduces power consumption. The new 16:9 aspect-ratio displays - 16-inch (1366x768 HD resolution) and 18.4-inch (1920x1080 full-HD resolution) - feature an 800:1 contrast ratio, 8ms response time and 262,144 colors. In addition to its 16:9 aspect ratio notebook displays, Samsung has completed development of a 15.4-inch LCD with an active, White-LED backlight. The new 15.4-inch (1440x900 WXGA resolution) display operates on 40 percent less power than a typical LED backlight and covers a dynamic contrast ratio of 10000:1. Samsung will unveil its latest LCD models, which it expects will garner considerable interest in the high-end notebook PC market, at FPD International being held in Yokohama, Japan, October 24-26. Mass production is scheduled to commence in the first half of next year for the 16:9 displays and in the second half of 2008 for the White-LED backlit panel.

Samsung has begun shipping 2.5" 64GB SSD SATA HDDs. The NAND flash-based hard drives are expected to become available as storage options for Dell and Alienware consumer notebooks. According to Samsung, Alienware will be offering 64GB and a 128GB configuration (dual 64GB RAID 0) as well as a single 64GB SSD combined with a 200GB 7200rpm hard drive for its Area-51 m9750 notebook. Dell will be selling the SSD as an option for the XPS M1330 notebook. Customers will have to reach deep into their pockets to be able to enjoy the 64 GB SSD, as it comes at an additional cost of $1100. Fully customized Alienware m9750 with 2x64 SSD RAID0 drives, Core 2 Duo T7600, 2xGeForce Go 7950 GTX - SLI, 4GB DDR2 memory, dual layer DVD burner and a genuine copy of Windows Vista will rise the price to around 6300$ without the optional Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio or any other accessories.

Samsung displayed two 22" LCD monitor models with VoIP functions at this year's IFA consumer electronics trade show. Samsung Electronics' new SyncMaster 220TN monitor is embedded with simple networking modules, enabling users to go online and make video calls when connected to LAN cable even without a PC. As the monitor has a built-in 2MP camera, microphone and speaker, users can make conference and video calls by using software that comes installed, without buying additional equipment while they go online. The other new monitor, SyncMaster 225UW, developed for more convenient VoIP calls, is optimized for Microsoft UC (Unified Communication) solution for total personal ID management. Moreover, the SyncMaster 225UW with built-in webcam, microphone and speaker allows users to make video calls or to chat with traditional messenger systems such as MS Live Messenger and Skype. Both monitors support high resolution of 1680x1050 and have USB hub functions with four USB ports. More information on Samsung at IFA 2007 is available here.

While recent recalls suggest that the current type of laptop batteries are dangerous, an alternative power source seems to be screaming "you ain't seen nothing yet": The Direct Methanol Fuel Cell. Samsung recently showed off a prototype of their Q35 laptop powered solely by a fuel cell. Samsung claims that the laptop can run eight hours a day for a month (about 240 hours) without needing a recharge. The most recent prototype of the Q35 even solved some noise problems previously associated with fuel cell powered laptops. Samsung is currently putting the Q35 through some strict safety testing, and it might even be available by the end of this year. A retail price is yet to be confirmed.