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Best Buy Rolls Out Mini-Shops For Samsung Appliances

Best Buy Rolls Out Mini-Shops For Samsung Appliances

By Kavita Kumar, Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (TNS)

MINNEAPOLIS — Best Buy’s alliance with Samsung is getting even deeper.

The electronics retailer, based in the Twin Cities suburb of Richfield, already has two store-within-a-store spaces dedicated Samsung products; one for TVs and the other for smartphones and mobile devices. Now, in some stores, it will add a Samsung branded space for appliances.

The “Samsung Open House,” a roughly 20-by-20-foot area, was installed in two Minneapolis-area Best Buy stores, as well as one in the Chicago area, in June. It will roll out the mini-shop to about 200 more locations by the end of the year.

“It’s a good partnership,” said Jeff Haydock, a Best Buy spokesman. “Samsung has done a great job in bringing technology into appliances.”

The move comes as Best Buy has placed greater emphasis on appliances as an area for growth. It is also a way for Best Buy to reduce its exposure to the volatility of consumer electronics.

Appliances account for about 7 percent of the Best Buy’s overall sales, but the category has been growing faster than some of its bigger product categories such as TVs and smartphones. Appliance sales at Best Buy grew 7.5 percent last year and 16.7 percent in 2013.

In recent years, Best Buy has also been rolling out Pacific Kitchen & Home mini-shops that offer higher-end appliances to many of its stores. It’s planning to add that to at least 50 more stores this year.

Best Buy has about 1,050 big box locations in the U.S., where it deploys the mix of store-within-stores. It also runs about 350 smaller Best Buy mobile stores, chiefly in shopping malls.

One of the key features of the new Samsung appliance departments will be an 85-inch touchscreen that will give customers an interactive tour of Samsung’s home appliances with photos, videos and other custom features.

The shops themselves will bring together many of the Samsung appliances that Best Buy already carries, such as a robot vacuum cleaner and a four-door refrigerator that allows customers to convert each zone into a freezer or refrigerator depending on their needs.

The mini-shops will be staffed by specially-trained Best Buy employees.

Best Buy did not disclose terms of the deal.

In 2013, Best Buy began partnering with Samsung with store-within-a-store concept in smartphones and tablets, similar to the Apple mini-shops it has had in its stores for years. It also launched a mini-shop with Microsoft that same year.

Last year, the retailer began adding Samsung and Sony mini-shops in home theater that showcase curved and 4K TVs to hundreds of its stores.

In these mini-shops, Best Buy and its vendor partners share the expenses to build out the space and to train employees.

In addition, Best Buy has been dedicating other parts of its stores to showcase products from other major vendors, such as GoPro, Beats, Dyson and Intel. But those areas are not considered store-within-a-stores because they generally don’t have specially-trained employees assigned to them.

Photo: Best Buy is launching 200 mini-Samsung stores throughout the country. Stanley Young via Flickr

Samsung, Apple Call Truce In Patent War Outside U.S.

Samsung, Apple Call Truce In Patent War Outside U.S.

Seoul (AFP) – Arch-rivals Samsung and Apple decided Wednesday to drop all patent disputes outside the United States, marking a partial ceasefire in a long-running legal war between the world’s two largest smartphone makers.

Both companies have been locked in a three-year battle of litigative attrition in close to a dozen countries, with each accusing the other of infringing on various patents related to their flagship smartphone and tablet products.

But neither has managed to deliver a knock-out blow with a number of rulings going different ways, and Wednesday’s announcement suggested a line was finally being drawn.

“Samsung and Apple have agreed to drop all litigation between the two companies outside the United States,” Samsung said in a statement.

However, the agreement came with one key caveat, with the two giants stressing that they would continue “to pursue the existing cases in U.S. courts.”

The patent row kicked off in earnest back in 2011, when Apple sued Samsung in a U.S. court, and swiftly went trans-continental with cases being heard in South Korea, Germany, Japan, Italia, the Netherlands, England, France and Australia among others.

Apple has accused its South Korean rival of massive and willful copying of its designs and technology for smartphones and tablets, and has asked for a bar on U.S. sales of Samsung smartphones and tablet computers.

Samsung has counter-claimed that Apple had used some of its technology without permission.

The two firms had been pushed into talks in early February by a U.S. court order that saw Apple CEO Tim Cook and his Samsung mobile communications counterpart JK Shin attend a full-day negotiation session, along with their advisers and legal teams.

But despite several follow-ups, the mediator’s settlement proposal was not taken up and the litigation continued.

In the latest development in May, a jury in federal court in California awarded Apple close to $120 million in damages in one of its patent suits with Samsung.

The award was only a fraction of the more than $2 billion Apple had sought at the outset of the trial, and the result was seen as partial victory for both sides.

Daishin Securities analyst Claire Kim said the two companies appeared to have tired of a lengthy, costly process that was producing no tangible dividends.

“They now realize there is no reason to continue their battle outside the U.S., because their lawsuits have produced so little results,” Kim told AFP.

When the lawsuits first started flying Samsung and Apple were the undisputed kings of the global smartphone market and their legal wrangles were seen as a fight for supremacy.

But that situation has changed, as developed markets have become increasingly saturated and emerging markets more competitive with the rise of Chinese manufacturers like Lenovo, Xiaomi and Huawei.

“There’s no more merit in the old strategy of expanding market share through attacks on rivals,” Kim told AFP.

Samsung’s share price closed 1.22 percent lower on Seoul’s main stock exchange after Wednesday’s announcement.

Samsung’s second-quarter net profit plunged 19.6 percent from a year ago to 6.25 trillion won ($6.1 billion), as competition from cheap Chinese phones and the strong won saw sales slump in its key mobile business.

Alarm bells have been sounding for a while over Samsung’s reliance on smartphone sales in mature markets such as Europe and the United States.

Efforts to expand sales in emerging markets, most notably China, have stumbled over the growing challenge posed by smaller rivals producing cheaper handsets.

There is a general consensus that smartphone evolution has hit a barrier that will only allow incremental improvements on existing design and technology, rather than market-changing reinvention.

AFP Photo/Jung Yeon-Je

Apple-Samsung Verdict Not Meant As A Message, Jury Foreman Says

Apple-Samsung Verdict Not Meant As A Message, Jury Foreman Says

By Howard Mintz, San Jose Mercury News

The federal jury’s mixed verdict in the latest patent showdown between Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. was not intended to send a broader message in the smartphone wars, the jury foreman said Monday.

In the end, although the jury ordered Samsung to pay about $120 million for copying some of Apple’s iPhone technology, the panel simply did not agree with Apple’s view that it was entitled to more than $2 billion for patent violations, jurors said Monday after putting finishing touches on their verdict.

“We didn’t feel either one was fair and just compensation,” Thomas Dunham, the foreman of the eight-member jury, said of the vastly different damages figures given to them by Apple and Samsung. Apple had sought $2.2 billion in damages and Samsung had argued that any award should not exceed $38 million.

“It wasn’t a decision based on trying to send a message to one company or another,” added Dunham, a retired IBM supervisor from San Martin, California, who had the only tech and patent expertise on the jury. “It was based on the evidence that was presented to us.”

After a monthlong trial, the jury on Friday found that Samsung violated two of four patents in iPhone technology the panel was asked to consider, but rejected some of Apple’s claims against its South Korean tech rival and awarded far less in damages than Apple had sought.

In addition, the jury found that Apple violated one of Samsung’s patents, for camera folder technology, and ordered it to pay $158,000 in damages.

At the beginning of jury deliberations, the jury asked for more evidence on what Apple CEO Steve Jobs may have said about suing his rivals, Samsung and Google, which played a central role in the trial because of its Android operating system. Samsung argued that Google was the real target of Apple’s patent claims because it considered Android, which runs Samsung smartphones and tablets, copied technology.

Jurors said Monday that they wanted more evidence on the topic, particularly after Apple revealed that Google had agreed to pay the cost of some of Samsung’s legal defense if it lost. But because they did not receive that evidence, they were left with unanswered questions about Apple’s motivation for pressing its patent claims against Samsung.

“If they really feel Google is the cause behind this, then don’t beat around the bush,” Dunham said.
Added juror Margarita Palmada, a retired teacher from Santa Clara, California: “It’s something we’d like to know more about. To get more of a feel of why it had gone this way.”

The jury in the latest trial had a more tempered view of the Apple-Samsung rivalry than the jury that hit Samsung with nearly $1 billion in damages in the first trial between the companies in 2012 involving different patents and older lines of products. After that first verdict, the jury foreman said the damages amount was meant to send a message about copying technological innovations.

But this jury had no such message, Dunham insisted. He noted, however, that such patent conflicts can be damaging to the market, and expressed hope Apple and Samsung can settle their differences.

“Ultimately, the consumer is the loser in all this,” Dunham said. “I’d like to see them find a way to settle. I hope this (verdict) in some way helps shape that future.”

Photo: Glenn Chapman via Flickr