Tablet tech wars

At Europe's biggest consumer electronics trade fair, Samsung has rented one of the biggest spots on offer. But its hotly awaited new tablet computer is nowhere to be seen at IFA consumer electronics show, which opens to the public in Berlin on Friday.

A court in Düsseldorf had stopped the South Korean gadget maker from selling its new Galaxy Tab 10.1 anywhere in Germany, although the same court soon suspended its own ruling.

But the product is still locked in a legal battle with rival Apple, which claims Samsung copied features of its iPad 2 tablet for its own device.

Apple says it owns some of the tablet technology through patents, but it's also using a European Union right called community design to say it owns the look and feel of the tablet computer as well.

Representatives from Samsung at the electronics fair have been tight lipped about the issue.

Tablet wars go wireless

The one place you can catch a glimpse of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 - if you're lucky - is at one of the mobile phone company stands. The wireless providers are located in another pavilion and not party to the legal skirmish with Apple.

It's in the wireless arena that the competition over tablet supremacy is likely to intensify.

Wireless networks are creaking under the strain of consumer demand for big downloads, which in many countries means anything over 20MB. To download anything bigger, such as films or some of the larger apps for the iPhone or Android-compatible smartphones, you need Wi-Fi, which is a big drain on battery life.

The focus is now on Long Term Evolution (LTE), the successor to 3G mobile networks, which also goes under the name 4G.

Coinciding with the IFA trade fair, Germany's T-Mobile has announced it is ramping up the speed of its LTE network by up to a factor of three.

Another mobile phone operator, Vodafone, is also using IFA to unveil its LTE network, which will start in the western German state of North-Rhine Westphalia.

'Lost' competitive edge

Some providers are selling LTE as being as fast as DSL broadband and there are reports that Apple is testing it on the iPhone.

The US-based firm is being squeezed into developing its products faster by competitors such as Samsung and Sony, which is showing off its first tablet computer at IFA. It runs on the Android operating system.

Android was developed by the web search company Google and has become Apple's fiercest competitor in mobile operating systems. Android gained an estimated 20 percent market share in its first year.

Apple is expected to release its iPhone 5 in the coming months – along with an updated operating system – to fend off such smart phone competition.

But Apple, which famously guards its secrets with a vengeance, might be faced with another major leak. In 2010, an Apple employee apparently lost a prototype of the iPhone 4 before its release. Now media reports say that history is repeating itself and an iPhone 5 prototype has gone missing, again in a San Francisco bar.

Author: Zulfikar Abbany (dpa, Reuters)
Editor: Kyle James