Hasta La Gadget!

While LG may be showing off some new mobile devices at CES next week, the company will also be showing off some new home appliances. The company announced today that they’ll be putting several new smart home appliances on display at CES 2013, including a new refrigerator, washing machine, robot vacuum, and oven.

The appliances can interact with users’ smartphones using NFC or remote control over a home WiFi network. By simply touching smartphones to the NFC tag on the smart appliances, users can easily control the refrigerator, washing machine, robotic vacuum cleaner, or the range oven. Users can also give simple voice commands via their smartphones and remotely monitor appliances using LG’s Smart Control.

Now, what exactly could you do with smart home appliances? LG says you could start a load of laundry while you’re on your way home from work, tell your robotic cleaner to vacuum the floor, or bring up a list of food items that are currently in the fridge, as well as bring up a grocery shopping list for items that you need.

The LCD displays on the appliances allow users to access a slew of information. For instance, the oven’s LCD screen can allow you to monitor the status of your oven, search for recipes, set cooking modes, and diagnose problems. Furthermore NFC allows you to quickly set your oven to any particular mode for a specific recipe. Nifty!

LG to show off smart home appliances at CES 2013 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

China has fined four Taiwanese businesses, in addition to LG and Samsung, for fixing the prices of flat panel displays, saying that in doing so they altered market prices. The fine is for a total of 144 million yuan, which is a little less than $23 million. That is in addition to an order to replay 172 yuan to customers who were affected by the price fixing.

According to the agency involved in investigating the issue, representatives from the six companies met throughout the years from 2001 to 2006 to arrange rates for the screens, which were then sold to various manufacturers throughout China. As part of the investigation, China’s National Development and Reform Commission seized nearly $6 million from all the companies.

The announcement states that a total of 53 meetings were held between Samsung, LG, HannStar, Chi Mei Corporation, Chunghwa Picture Tubes, and AU Optronics. In doing so, it is stated that the companies harmed domestic enterprises. The penalities are being applied under the “Price Law,” rather than China’s anti-monopoly law due to the dates when the meetings took place.

Because it is being dealt with under the Price Law, the penalties are lighter than what would be issued under the anti-monopoly law. According to the statement, all six companies have stated that they will cease the activity. This move from China is part of its effort to “restrict monopolistic behavior, expose cases to the public, and maintain a unified, open, competitive and orderly market system.”

[via SDPC]

China fines LG and Samsung for fixing prices to manipulate the market is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Smartphone launches sometimes have to build up steam before they can go full speed ahead. Apple might be learning this first-hand, based on ComScore’s figures. After a lackluster October, the company’s just-reported November smartphone market share in the US was up sharply, to 35 percent; while the spike isn’t directly credited to the iPhone 5, rapidly growing availability of the company’s newest smartphone certainly didn’t hurt. Android was still comfortably ruling the roost at 53.7 percent, although its share was only a slight increase over October. As such, most of Apple’s gain during the month came from smaller rivals’ pain.

It was a more familiar story among individual phone makers. Samsung had a comfortable lead at 26.9 percent of the larger American cellphone market in November, while Apple padded its advantage over a sinking LG to hit 18.5 percent. With Motorola and HTC also on the downward slide, the US market this fall was increasingly mirroring its global counterpart, where it was really Apple and Samsung’s game to play — others might have to be content watching from the sidelines in the future.

Continue reading ComScore: iPhone up to 35 percent of US smartphone share in November, Android steady

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, HTC, Nokia, Google, LG, RIM

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Source: ComScore

By now, it’s obvious that LG will be unveiling something at CES this year, but as far as what they have up their sleeve is still a mystery. The company released a new YouTube video that teases their upcoming press conference at CES 2013, and they provide a very quick and vague look at their upcoming smartphone, which could possibly be the Optimus G2.

We’ve already heard about the successor to LG’s Optimus G, rumored to sport a 5.5-inch 1080p display and a new Snapdragon S4 “Prime” quad-core processor clocked at 2.0 – 2.5GHz — somewhere in that range. And from the teasing in the LG video, it’s our guess that the company is planning such a phone for a CES 2013 reveal.

However, the image above is about the best look that you’ll get so far of the rumored device, but it doesn’t really look like much anyway. The 0:17 second mark is where you’ll want to look in the video in case you want to see it for yourself. Then right after that, we see some sort of appliance, which isn’t a huge surprise, since LG will most likely unveil more than just a smartphone at next week’s event.

We’ve heard rumors in the past about a possible 5-inch and 5.5-inch LG superphone in the works. Both of them are said to run Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, quad-core processors, 13 MP cameras, and maybe even 3GB of RAM. Of course, CES is only days away, so it’ll only be a matter of time before we see what LG has planned.

[via Android Community]

LG Optimus G2 rumored for CES 2013 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It was at Christmas when LG announced their HECTO 100” Laser TV projector, and fast forward to the week before CES 2013 kicks off, and LG has already launched the HECTO 100” Laser TV projector that will come with both Smart TV and Digital TV capabilities. This is no doubt an impressive home cinema system by any standards, where it comprises of an immersive screen and an external Ultra Short Throw (UST) projection unit that can show off images at extremely short distances. In fact, the whole reason behind the existence of this special system that offers Full HD 1080p resolution as well as incredible contrast can be attributed to LG’s advanced laser-based illumination system.

Basically, the HECTO Laser TV projector system provides you the luxury of placing the lens a mere 22 inches (approximately 56 centimeters) from the screen in orde rto work, where it delivers Full HD resolution at 1080p and a 10,000,000 :1 dynamic contrast ratio, making sure that whatever your eyes see will be vivid and crisp images, popping out in the dark in addition to being a treat to watch in lighter environments. We cannot wait to wrap our fingers around one of these puppies for sure when CES 2013 kicks off! [Press Release]

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