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SBS Presenter Ricardo Goncalves with the latest in finance.

Battle for smartphone supremacy as Galaxy SIII launches

31 May 2012 | 18:14 | Source: Ricardo Goncalves, SBS

The battle for smartphone supremacy has stepped up with Samsung unveiling what it hopes will be an iPhone killer.

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It comes at a tumultuous time for some of the major players in the industry.

Earlier today, Samsung launched its top of the range Galaxy SIII.

The phone has a powerful quad processor, which means it's super fast, an 8- mega pixel camera with software that is able to recognise faces.

The device also has voice recognition features like Apple’s Siri and a near 5 inch screen.

The company is hoping to topple market leader Apple, after it sold 45 million units of the Galaxy S 2.

That's left Apple fans pondering when, or even if an iPhone 5 will be released, although there is speculation the tech giant is in the midst of unveiling what's been dubbed the iTV.

Meanwhile, Blackberry maker Research In Motion is in serious trouble.

The Canadian company warned it would report a quarterly loss.

It's share price has plummeted from US$140 four years ago, to just US$10.

Technology researcher Alex Guana from JMP Securities, told Reuters, “There are some BlackBerry fans. Now there are obviously an order of magnitude more iPhone and Android phones and that’s an important distinction. It’s not something that Research In Motion did wrong per se. It’s more of what the competition did right. They were more innovative. They moved faster and they seized the opportunity of touch screens and the internet more rapidly that RIM which fundamentally had its value in e-mail services”.

RIM has now hired two bankers to try to figure out what to do with the company, with the break up possible.

Peter Misek, an analyst at Jefferies and Co told Reuters, “the handful of players that would make sense in that scenario would be an Amazon, or a Microsoft, potentially Facebook. But frankly Facebook is not interested in the corporate side so that would be a less clean situation. A Samsung might be interested to some extent, and then the Chinese we think would be interested”.

Facebook is also reportedly considering its own branded smartphones as its share price continued to decline.

Shares are now down almost one third from its listing price of US$38 just weeks ago.

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