Samsung, a global tech leader, recently unveiled its latest product, the Pro Ultimate memory card. Samsung underscored its commitment to accommodate the rapidly expanding digital industry – a world defined by growing file sizes and a continuous evolution of image and video quality.

The new Pro Ultimate memory cards, featuring high-performance capacities, will be available in both microSD and SD formats. Samsung aims to facilitate a broad array of creators with this versatile product, boasting compatibility with everything from traditional DSLR systems to the latest drones and action cameras.

Exemplifying cutting-edge design, the newly launched 28-nanometer memory cards promise power efficiency, allowing devices to perform for extended periods between charges.

Details About Samsung Pro Ultimate Memory Cards

Samsung is bringing an array of storage capacity options to their consumers in both the microSDXC and SDXC versions. The options include 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB variants. Recognizing the diversity of digital content creators, Samsung is also offering a smaller 64GB version for their larger capacity card.

These next-generation memory cards offer industry-leading read speeds of up to 200MB/s and write speeds of up to 130MB/s. This performance, the maximum obtainable from the UHS-I interface, ensures that creators can handle a wide variety of content, including 4K UHD and FHD video, and V30.

Comments From The Memory Brand Product Biz Team Leader

“The Samsung Pro Ultimate supports the high-resolution content needs of professional creators through enhanced controller technologies and multi-proof protection features,” says Hangu Sohn, the head of Samsung’s Memory Brand Product Biz Team. (source)

The multifaceted protection features provide resilience against water, X-ray, and magnet hazards, serve as shock absorbers supporting up to 1,500 kg, and can resist temperature variations from -25°C to 85°C. Samsung aims these cards to be a robust and reliable solution for a wide range of environments and applications.

Availability And Pricing

Pricing details for these new Samsung Pro Ultimate memory cards have been released. In the UK, microSD cards will be available this month starting at £19.49 MSRP, and regular SD cards will be accessible from £15.99 starting in October. Also, USB card readers, specially designed to maximize these high-performance memory cards, will be purchasable at £24.99 (microSD) and £21.79 (SD). However, Samsung has yet to announce the prices for other regions.

Conclusion

These new Samsung Pro Ultimate memory cards, with their impressive capacities and best-in-class protection features, are ticking all the right boxes for our content creators. As digital files continue to grow in size and complexity, a robust and reliable storage solution like this becomes an absolute necessity. Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences with us in the comments section below.

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IT leaders and their departments are becoming more business-focused – and not a moment too soon – realising the need to move faster and be more agile, in order to meet both strategic business goals and changing customer needs.

‘Fail fast and move on’, as the mantra goes, with the big picture being the emergence of startups and innovative thinkers who see the potential to disrupt markets with apps and sharing-economy services, but without the millstone of legacy systems – or, sometimes, any need to turn a profit before they’re snapped up by bigger platforms.

Once-core IT functions – such as the proverbial ‘keeping the lights on’ – are now outsourced commodity services, with the real value-add for the IT function being enabling the business to move at startup speed, while removing the barriers for employees to work when, where, and how they please.

Within the organisation, a flexible, agile, DevOps focus is emerging. Outside of it, cloud platforms, commercial 5G networks and services, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other Industry 4.0 technologies, are rising and coalescing around the Internet of Things (IoT).

So far so good. But often overlooked in these megatrends is the role of communications service providers (CSPs); but it shouldn’t be, as we all become more mobile and reliant on them.

“CSPs’ ability to provide connectivity while leveraging multiple data sets gives them “a unique competitive edge to play with” in the 5G and IoT spaces, but it’s “not a foregone conclusion that they will win”. That’s the view of networking and communications provider, Ericsson, which has published a new report, Realising IoT Strategies, in the same week as Vodafone shared its own report on the IoT landscape.

According to Ericsson, digitalisation is “bringing both new friends and foes to CSPs, so they need to ensure they have the right strategic approach and pursue the opportunities that play to their considerable strengths.”

So what are those opportunities and strengths? CSPs may want to develop a cross-industry strategy such as data monetisation, says the report, while others may wish to devise a strategy targeting a vertical, such as transport and logistics, where the IoT has obvious impacts (as explored in a separate report on the Vodafone research).

However, the current momentum of digitalisation is causing the boundaries between many industries to become less defined, warns Ericsson, perhaps suggesting that a platform approach with different industry connectors may be the way ahead.

“Amidst all this change, CSPs are advancing their 5G and IoT strategies to provide greater value “both within and beyond connectivity”, explains the report. To compete, they must deploy their existing assets to defend and evolve their core businesses – such as “providing enhanced digital experiences, rolling out high-performance networks, and improving operational efficiency” – while exploring the opportunities for new growth that are enabled by 5G and the IoT.”

Ericsson says its own strategy is to help CSPs navigate through these uncertainties, by engaging strategically with their CXOs to help them define strategic intents in 5G and the IoT, how to best capture value, and whether they should focus on their existing core business or take on a larger role in the value chain.

Accordingly, Ericsson has developed a strategic 5G and IoT framework that has eight key dimensions: Strategic intent; consumer focus; enterprise focus; value chain position; go-to-market/ecosystem strategy; commercial model; portfolio and network strategy; and operating model. CSPs can use this framework to explore where their own 5G and IoT pursuits should be focused, starting with their positioning and differentiation in the market.

Taking a holistic approach across all eight dimensions is vitally important, says Ericsson, because only then can CSPs develop a unified view of their 5G and IoT priorities.

Based on its work with these companies to date, Ericsson reports that CSPs find five of the eight dimensions to be the most challenging:

• Strategic intent: CSPs tend to be too technology-focused and lack long-term strategic thinking about their 5G and IoT investments, says Ericsson. Even when they have that intent, they can be too ambitious about their execution ability. This means that their 5G and IoT strategies are often misaligned, putting their ability to capture 5G’s and the IoT’s potential at risk.
• Enterprise focus: What Ericsson calls CSPs’ “opportunistic approach” to targeting enterprises means their focus is diluted across many sectors. As a result, they face difficulty in providing meaningful 5G and IoT value to those segments. This problem is exacerbated by their miscalculation of the industry-specific expertise needed when targeting enterprises.
• Value chain position: Many leading CSPs want to assume larger roles higher up the IoT technology stack, but they often underestimate the capabilities required to reach a dominant position beyond connectivity and network provisioning. More, they may be taking competition from IT firms in the IoT stack too lightly, says Ericsson.
• Go-to-market/ecosystem strategy: CSPs are currently attempting to develop capabilities in-house and build solid partnerships for execution. They are also looking to compensate for their lack of experience and exposure to industry partners as they go to market.
• Operating model: CSPs commonly operate in silos, with isolated enterprise and network departments, causing disjointed strategic and operational approaches on 5G and the IoT. More, their IoT responsibilities tend to be scattered across the organisation.

“In short, it could be said that CSPs face the same transition challenges as many of their enterprise customers. And across all eight dimensions of Ericsson’s framework there are distinct gaps between CSPs’ current and intended positions. “These deltas must be bridged to reach strategic intents,” the report warns.”

And that’s not all. Most CSPs adopt an opportunistic approach to new revenue streams, but their desire is to follow a more well-defined strategy. Their opportunistic approach also means they tend to have a broad industry focus today while aiming to target a selected few in the future.

Given that many CSPs are part of larger conglomerates, a natural starting point for them would be to focus on the industries in which their groups are already operating. This would present some obvious advantages: easier access to the enterprise and the ability to scale and demonstrate initial use cases faster while improving the competitiveness of the parent company.

Most CSPs are also connectivity-centric, but have clear ambitions to capture the full value of 5G and move up the IoT stack to take on more profitable roles beyond connectivity, concludes Ericsson.

• In related news this week, Ericsson warned that growing media alarm about Chinese technology giant Huawei – whose activities in the UK have long been monitored by the security services – risks delaying the rollout of 5G networks and services in Europe.

Read our latest news here. A Tech About Tech Brand.

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Google has come up with the latest version of Android called Android O, expected to be released later this summer. It also has plans to get the latest version of its Android update on its estimated 2 billion devices. Google’s main competitor Apple’s most recent version of its software iOS 10 has found its way to about 79% of all iPads and iPhones. In a shocking contrast to that about 82% of Android users use the older versions of the software mentioned above.

But why is the Android update terribly slow on phones not built by Google? This is because there isn’t any modularity in the system. Unlike Apple, which produces the hardware and the software for its iPads, iPhones and MacBooks, the vast majority of Android phones are not made by Google.

Other than a few Nexus phone that are directly manufactured by Google, most of the phones are build by other companies like Nokia, Samsung, RedMi or HTC. Whenever Google creates a new version of its android update it is passed to the chipmakers. These chipmakers customize bits of the Android updated code to ensure that the update works well with the processors. Only then is the software handed over to the phone companies like Nokia or Redmi. These companies will add their own features before sending it to the network carrier who notify the consumer. Only then the consumer has the option of updating their phone. This whole process usually takes months.

With Project Treble, Google aims at cutting this time consuming process by separating the particular updated code that the chipmakers use by making it more convenient for them to find everything in one place. The goal therefore is to cut the amount of time it would normally take to pass the new version of update from Google to the chipmaker and then to the device makers.

There is always the catch, however, of handset makers and carriers taking as long as they want before sending out Android updates. It might be more profitable for these hardware manufacturers to not send the update, since outdated software would increase the chances of the consumer’s dissatisfaction, thereby increasing their probability of purchasing a new phone.

Google plans to change this with its Project Treble which will aim at speeding the time it takes for phones to install the latest updates. With Android O, Google is aiming at its biggest surgery in the Android world. Google plans to introduce a vendor interface that allows the device manufacturers to ship the new Update just by updating the Android OS framework without any additional work required from the silicon manufacturers.

The changes will to be incorporated in its Android O update. It is hoped that these changes to its system will make it cheaper, faster, and easier for manufacturers to update devices. Hopefully that will keep the candy in our mouths and out of our cell phones.

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