Strategy Analytics ranked Samsung the #1 Android tablet maker and the world’s #2 tablet company behind Apple in Q1 2011. It took them a month to sell a millionth Galaxy S II smartphone in Korea and brag about it on their Flickr account with the above image.
Samsung is content on releasing more Android tablets despite that pending legal spat with Apple, which is accusing them of stealing the iPad’s and iPhone’s design, software features and hardware engineering with the Galaxy-branded tablets and smartphones. The Wall Street Journal quoted this morning Samsung’s J.K. Shin who underscored his company’s determinacy to release more Honeycomb tablets this year as they “continue to work with Android on future tablets”. Their senior vice president of sales and marketing Younghee Lee added:
Android is the fastest-growing platform and the market direction is headed toward Android so we’re riding the wave. When there is a market need for our own software, we will consider it but that’s not our plan at the moment.
Now, about that “fastest-growing platform” thing – I guess Samsung folks didn’t get the memo. The company also says it’ll continue offering tablet PCs in multiple screen sizes as a way of distinguishing themselves from Apple. Asked to comment on that pending lawsuit with Apple, Shin responded:
We didn’t copy Apple’s design. We have used many similar designs over the past years and it [Apple’s allegation] will not be legally problematic.
Despite such a cautiously-worded statement (Apple is, after all, their key buyer), Shin “suggested the scale of the lawsuit could grow”, author Yun-Hee Kim wrote in the Journal report. Samsung is set to release its Honeycomb-driven Galaxy Tab tablet in June in two sizes: a 10.1-inch model matching the iPad’s entry-level price and a smaller 8.9-inch variant. A version with the cellular radio for the fourth-generation LTE networks will be available later this year in the US and South Korea. The company is aiming to ship about 72 million smartphones and 7.5 million tablets this year versus an IHS iSuppli-estimated 39.7 million iPads in 2011.
(Cross-posted on 9to5Google.com)
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