Computers

This display is based on Qualcomm's mirasol reflective tech.

Samsung co-CEO Shin Jong-kyu  told media last week that he expected the company’s new flagship smartphone the Galaxy S4 to pass 10 million channel sales this week, and that has proven to be true as the electronics giant announced the milestone (via Yonhap News) today. The Galaxy S4 was released at the end of April so, by hitting 10 million sales already, it has reached the milestone 20 times faster than its predecessor — the Galaxy S3 — which needed two months to hit the same lofty goal. Samsung’s Galaxy range actually passed 100 million sales to date (again, this is channel sales, so sales to retailers and operators rather than consumers) in January this year. That news coincided, rather nicely, with the Galaxy S3 clocking up 40 million channel sales within 7 months of its launch. Given the massive momentum behind the Galaxy S4, it seems entirely feasible that it will go on to break more records and become Samsung’s biggest and fastest selling phone to date. The device has a premium 5-inch 1080p display, set at an impressive 441 ppi. Under the hood is a quad-core 1.6 GHz Cortex-A15 processor, bumped up by an additional quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 chipset. That’s a whole lot of processing power. At this point it isn’t clear what devices that the Galaxy S4 will come up against. Apple is rumored to be planning to launch a new version of the iPhone later this year, which would become its main contender. Thus far it seems that competition from the likes of the well-regard HTC One have not cut into demand for Samsung’s flagship device. The Galaxy S4 has enjoyed a monumental marketing campaign both before and after its launch, starting with a number of teaser videos that included Seth Rogan and Paul Rudd during the Superbowl, as well as this little chap leading up to the launch event in New York. The Broadway-style unveiling in the Big Apple drew some criticism from the press, but it was without doubt one of Samsung’s grandest and most high-profile media events. Billboard and television advertisements have since swamped a number of major cities, giving the Galaxy S4 the best possible chance at retail. Related: Confirmed: Samsung buys 10% stake in Korean handset maker Pantech for $48 million Headline image via Greg Wood / Getty Images

Editor's Rating: User Rating: Good: The 2013 Nissan Pathfinder's transmission delivers smooth acceleration and can even handle a 5,000-pound tow load, while its four-wheel-drive system helps it in the slippery stuff. A surround-view camera system makes for damage-free maneuvering.Bad: The Pathfinder's cabin electronics are dated, with no app integration, and the full suite with navigation is only available in the top trim.Bottom Line: The 2013 Nissan Pathfinder serves as an all-around good people carrier and family road-trip vehicle, but pushes few boundaries when it comes to tech. [Read more]

Editor's Rating: User Rating: Good: The Acer Aspire R7 offers an inventive and very flexible design at a reasonable price, with a full-HD display.Bad: Some of the design risks, including a misplaced touch pad and an awkward tablet mode, make the R7 a hassle to use.Bottom Line: Acer deserves credit for trying new things in the ambitious Aspire R7. If you can get used to the odd touch pad, it's good for sharing your screen with a group, but it may just too far outside the mainstream for wide appeal. [Read more]

It's apparent to anyone by now that startups serving enterprise customers have become the darlings of investors. On Friday, two of them had very successful initial public offerings: Tableau Software's stock was initially priced at $31 a share, rose 60% that day, hit a high of $59 on Monday and was today still trading at over $50. Marketo rose nearly 78% on its first day of trading from the opening price of $13 to over $23 and today was trading at ~$25. This follows big hit IPOs last year from Splunk, Palo Alto Networks, and Workday, to name a few. Why are investors so gung-ho on enterprise, when consumer stocks like Zynga and Groupon are struggling? Asheem Chandna, a venture capitalist specializing in enterprise at Greylock Partners explains: "It's because these markets are real. The IT market is a multi-trillion-dollar market," he told Emily Chang during an interview for Bloomberg West TV. "Enterprises spend real dollars" and have big IT budgets. Plus, he says, this is only the beginning: "We're still very early in the move towards the cloud and towards mobile." Those are two technologies that are radically altering how enterprises deliver tech to their employees. Chandra isn't predicting the death of the current crop of big enterprise players, like Oracle, SAP, or Salesforce.com. Those companies will acquire plenty of these startups and keep on ticking. But he does see the new players taking some customers away from them. He predicts at least a few of these young companies are destined to become billion-dollar companies on their own. That's obviously what investors see, too.SEE ALSO: The 19 Best Enterprise Tech Venture Capitalists SEE ALSO: VCs Are Throwing Money At These 10 Enterprise Startups Please follow SAI: Enterprise on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

Last year The New York Times unleashed its vision of digitally native storytelling with "Snow Fall." The piece broke away from standard newsprint-transplanted-to-Web design, offering interactive graphics, videos, and other multimedia integrated into an overall narrative. It wasn't necessarily Earth shattering, but it demonstrated a cool concept for others to aspire to. The push to move beyond common content templates is precisely what drives the tiny start-up Scroll Kit. According to a blog post by founder Cody Brown, the company works "to help publishers break from their templates and craft powerful digital stories" by streamlining this process. So Brown saw "Snow Fall" as an opportunity to demonstrate the capabilities of Scroll Kit. He continued: "Instead of tweeting about how awesome 'Snow Fall' was, I wanted to do something that would show its admirers that they can do it too—I made a replica. It took about an hour to put together, and I recorded a video of the process." Nice homage, right? Not quite. According to the cease-and-desist letter Brown later received from NYT, the video is actually a nice example of copyright infringement. NYT requested that Brown remove the demo from YouTube, the Scroll Kit site, and other social media avenues within three days. Despite considering the video acceptable under fair use, Brown didn't want to fight the NYT legal team and he complied (setting the video to private). Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Yext is a quiet giant in the business of local marketing. You don't go on its site to find a business. Instead, through its PowerListings service, Yext makes sure that when you search for a business on Yahoo, Yelp, Foursquare, or Patch, you get the right address, hours, and phone number. More than 100,000 businesses have signed up. Business Insider was at Yext's office the day they announced a $27 million round of funding at a valuation of $270 million in June 2012. Then it made the news again in August with the sale of an advertising business, Felix, for $30 million. Since our last visit, Yext has moved into a pretty amazing new office at 1 Madison Avenue in Manhattan, New York. Its 175 employees fit into 40,000 square feet there.The entrance is spacious and inviting. A moving ticker that shows every listing update as it is made. Yext is all about location. This map describes its position in the startup universe. (While it's similar to a famous map of the social Web by XKCD, CEO Howard Lerman tells us it was inspired by old maps.) The new office is humming. See the rest of the story at Business Insider Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.

Glassdoor just released its ranking of the top 10 tech companies with the best business outlook in the next six months, as rated by the firms' own staff. Employees that work at these companies are optimistic because they are working on the latest and greatest in technology, they are inspired by their projects, and the companies are growing like crazy. Glassdoor compiled a bunch of quotes from employees at these firms, explaining why they believe their companies are so optimistic. (Glassdoor allows current and former employees to share their experiences and rate companies they've worked at.) The information is based on companies with at least 20 business outlook ratings and at least 20 company reviews during April 2013. Company ratings are based on a 5-point scale: 1.0=very dissatisfied, 3.0=OK, 5.0=very satisfied.Huawei Technologies is the largest telecommunications equipment maker in the world. Company Rank: 10 Company Rating: 3.1 out of 5 Business Outlook: Percentage of employees that say the company is getting better: 55% Percentage of employees that say the company is getting worse: 14% Percentage of employees that say the company is staying the same: 32% Employee Feedback: “Employees are very talented and smart.. Get to work on the cutting edge of technology.” – Huawei Technologies Senior Engineer (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) Apple designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics like the iPhone and iPad. Company Rank: 9 Company Rating: 3.8 Business Outlook: Percentage of employees that say the company is getting better: 59% Percentage of employees that say the company is getting worse: 9% Percentage of employees that say the company is staying the same: 32% Employee Feedback: “Have a direct impact on the products that people use everyday. Being able to work with some of the smartest engineers in the world.” – Apple Employee (Cupertino, CA) HCL Technologies is an Indian company that provides IT services and consulting. Company Rank: 8 Company Rating: 3.2 Business Outlook: Percentage of employees that say the company is getting better: 60% Percentage of employees that say the company is getting worse: 25% Percentage of employees that say the company is staying the same: 15% Employee Feedback: “Stability factor, transparency in policies, Friendly environment, good infrastructure, on time salaries.” – HCL Technologies Software Engineer (Noida, India) See the rest of the story at Business Insider Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.

Enterprise technology is a $1 trillion market. It's also become a hot focus for startups and investors as new tech ranging from big data to software-defined networking upend the old-school stuff. Before writing checks for projects that may cost their companies tens of thousands up to a million dollars, IT pros will naturally do their homework. And they are increasingly doing that homework by crawling social networks to find out what others are saying about the product. So LinkedIn conducted a survey to find out exactly what IT pros were doing with LinkedIn and other social networks. The results show IT professionals have three times more connections on LinkedIn than the average user, and they are using them for everything from gabbing with their peers about tech, to getting product demos.LinkedIn hired Forrester to do one study and Research Now to do another on how IT pros use LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Buying new tech for employees can be daunting: there's lots of options, complicated multi-year contracts and government regulations. IT pros use their social network peeps to help narrow down the choices. See the rest of the story at Business Insider Please follow SAI: Enterprise on Twitter and Facebook.

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