Samsung Joins RIM, Claims Apple is Wrong About Reception Issues

By Ian Bell July 19, 2010

Samsung Electronics Co said on Monday that it has received no significant complaints related to smartphone signal reception after Apple said the issue was shared by the entire smartphone industry.

At a rare conference on Friday, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs rejected any suggestion the iPhone 4’s design was flawed and said the industry shared the reception problem, specifically naming rivals Samsung, Research in Motion and Taiwan’s HTC Corp.

“We have not received significant customer feedback on any signal reduction issue for the Omnia II,” Samsung said in a statement, referring to its smartphone model which was featured in Apple’s video on Friday.

Samsung, the world’s No.2 handset maker, competes with Apple on smartphone and digital music players but also supplies memory chips for the world’s biggest technology company by market value.

Jobs’ argument was also swiftly rejected by RIM, which said late on Friday that Apple was trying deliberately to distort the issues surrounding the iPhone 4’s antenna design by asserting RIM’s BlackBerry had similar reception problems.

“Apple’s attempt to draw RIM into Apple’s self-made debacle is unacceptable,” RIM co-Chief Executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie said in a statement emailed late Friday.

Since the June 24 launch of the iPhone 4, some users have reported drastically reduced signal strength when they held the touch-screen phone a certain way, leading to dropped calls.

“This is life in the smartphone world. Phones aren’t perfect. Most every smartphone we tested behaved like this,” Jobs said.

In response to Jobs’ comments, Samsung defended its design.

“Based on years of experience of designing high quality phones, Samsung mobile phones employ an internal antenna design technology that optimizes reception quality for any type of hand-grip use,” Hwan Kim, vice-president of mobile communications, said in a statement.

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