Samsung aims to be no.1 in laptops – we talk to the top men in Seoul

2. TECHNICAL INNOVATIONS – SAMSUNG THROUGH AND THROUGH

It’s not just all long-term planning and favourable economic conditions though, Samsung’s key advantage is that it’s a huge semi-conductor manufacturer, which designs, develops and manufactures its own components. Last year, Samsung proudly told us, the company had filed the second highest number of new patents for a technology company, just behind IBM.

To give you some idea just how successful Samsung is in this area, its three biggest clients in 2010 were Apple, Sony and Dell – three of the key companies that Samsung will need to beat to achieve global laptop dominance. The semi-conductor business is hard to fathom, at present Samsung manufactures the RAM, processor chipset and Retina Display in the new iPad, but at the same time the two companies are involved in legal battles over whether Samsung’s tablets have ripped-off Apple’s design. Neither, though, is letting that little tiff get in the way of a deal that is making both companies a lot of money.

There’s a lot of Samsung technology inside Apple’s new iPad

Coming back to the Series 9, Samsung’s semi-conductor expertise allows it to push the boundaries a little when it comes to the engineering of our ultimate laptop, as Kevin Lee, Vice President PC Development Group, explained to us.

And there’s an awful lot more packed inside the Series 9 – from the bottom on the left you can see the battery, touchpad, motherboard (three pieces), fans/heat pipes and keyboard

The display is a good example, at 13.3in and with a 1,600×900 resolution it isn’t ground-breaking for a high-end Ultrabook. However, the Samsung-made panel is brighter than any of its competitors, putting out a whacking 400nits (compared to 300nits on most laptops). This lets you use the laptop in brighter conditions, which is important for a portable device. At the opposite end of the scale, the backlit keyboard means you can work in the dark too. Here Samsung’s engineers combined the keyboard sensor sheet with an electro-luminant material, negating the need to include the LEDs which would normally provide the backlight. The sheet provides a more even backlight and saves a little in terms of space and weight.

The electro-luminant keyboard sheet, which also provides backlighting

Other ways in which the engineers shaved grams and millimetres off the Series 9 includes a single-sided motherboard, with all the chips mounted on one side, and the use of just four eight gigabit memory chips rather than 16 more conventional two gigabit chips. The fans are ultra-thin at just 4mm deep, though the engineers are most looking forward to even more heat-efficient Intel processors and chipsets, so that these can be furthered reduced or removed entirely. The battery used has a higher-than usual voltage polymer cell which provides an extra 16% cell capacity, this helped keep it slim while still scoring an impressive eight hours in our light usage battery test.