To tout new iPad, Apple takes swipe at Samsung
Apple CEO Tim Cook introduces the new iPad during an event in San Francisco, Wednesday. The new iPad features a sharper screen and a faster processor. [AP/YONHAP]
Apple unveiled its newest iPad on Wednesday in San Francisco and made a point of comparing it to competing machines by Samsung.
“We think that iPad is the poster child of the post-PC world,” Apple chief executive Tim Cook said at its launch. Cook noted that iPad sales topped those of any personal computer maker during the final three months of last year.
Cook took a swipe at competitor Samsung by comparing the look of some apps on the new iPad and on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. He showed a slide of the Twitter app on the competing machine and said: “It kind of looks like a blown-up smartphone app running on a tablet - and that’s exactly what it is!”
“Apple unveiled its new iPad today at an event in San Francisco, which isn’t much of a surprise,” commented Techradar.com, a technology news site, “But the fact that it felt it needed to mock Samsung for its Galaxy Tab lineup is.”
The bad news for local Apple fans is that Korea is not one of the countries where the new model will be sold starting March 16. Industry analysts think it won’t be available here until late April at the earliest. In addition, the frequency band for 4G, long-term evolution service (LTE) on the new iPad is not supported by Korean telecommunication companies, and the highly touted dictation function on the machine doesn’t work in Korean.
As with the original iPad and the iPad 2, the new iPad comes with many Korean-made parts, Korean media reported yesterday.
Apple designed the new A5X processor used in the device, but Samsung Electronics is its contract manufacturer, according to Money Today, a Korean business daily. Application processors work as the brains of mobile devices, like the central processing unit in a PC, and are thought to have a bright future with the boom in mobile devices.
The suppliers of the Retina display used in new iPad are believed to be Samsung and LG Display, according to market researcher IHS iSuppli. In fact, LG reportedly switched some of its LCD lines for televisions to tablet lines in its Gumi, North Gyeongsang, plants to increase its panel supplies for the new iPad.
But when is the new iPad coming to Korea?
The new iPad will go on sale March 16 in 10 countries, including Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong and the United States.
It will go on sale March 23 in 25 countries, including Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Macau and Mexico.
Based on the sales schedule of the iPad 2 released last March, market insiders in Korea speculate that the new iPad will go on sale in Korea in late April at the earliest. The iPad 2 was released late last April.
But there might be a further delay to the Korea release as the frequency bands of LTE that the third-generation iPad works on, 700 MHz (megahertz) and 2.1 GHz (gigahertz), are not available in Korea.
“The new iPad supports LTE, but only the frequency bands of the North American carriers,” Jo Won-seok, a senior official at LG U+, said yesterday.
While some sources said only the Wi-Fi model will be sold in Korea, as Apple rarely tweaks features to suit the systems of a certain country, others say that Apple might make an exception because LTE technology is new and most countries are in the early stages of fully adopting it.
By Kim Hyung-eun [hkim@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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