Google worried about Samsung's dominance

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Interesting article on The Verge website has appeared via the Wall Street Journal

"Google is growing increasingly worried about Samsung's position atop the Android smartphone market, according to the Wall Street Journal. During a meeting last year, Android head Andy Rubin reportedly hailed the manufacturer's spectacular success, though also warned that Google could fall into a precarious position should Samsung pull too far ahead of competitors.

The company already wields plenty of influence, tallying 39.6 percent of the global smartphone market last year, with Android devices making up a vast majority of that figure. Other Android vendors haven't fared nearly as well, painting a situation that could allow Samsung to demand more from Google, or — in a worst case scenario — follow Amazon's lead and develop its own forked-off version of the OS."

Full article below click on the link

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/25/4029446/google-worried-about-samsung-dominance-of-android

Samsung has grown very quickly over the past few years and has taken on Apple like traits.

What do you all think?
 
they should be worried of how crap the others are, update wise. Look at the latest motofail for example or the Sony Xperia's which are bound to get updated at best late April...Samsung is the best for a reason. Why hurt the successful and not help the weaker?
 
Samsung are this successful but only in partnership with google / android. I've owned the S1/2/3 but would not buy a samsung mobile if they branched out with a different OS.
 
I think Samsung have had the broadest OS deployment in the last 5 years (Even restricting to smart OSes they have had Bada/Symbian/Windows(all variants)/Android/Tizen) and their position as a provider of phones priced for all market points from throwaway to high performance did them well - they beat Nokia at their own game and then took their ball away. No one else managed this in almost 20 years, they are not to be underestimated.

Samsung have an interesting position - their distribution is world class, their network agreements also and when they started upping their game on phones this was pretty much always going to lead to this position. The only others with this setup are Nokia and Apple. If Google wanted to compete via Motorola they could reverse their ongoing worldwide withdrawal back to the USA and lead the charge. LG are a "little samsung" in mobile land in my eyes - a few decent world class phones, a bit of market share, no place to go but up - I expect them to do better than Moto in the short/mid. LG fiercely competes with Samsung for those who don't see much of the conflict - both worldwide electronic goods producers out of SKorea - I'd wager they see this rivalry as more important than vs Apple ;)

The other growers of Android - Asus/ZTE/Hue all make some decent stuff but they have poor marketing (in Europe - they all do mad business in Asia) and their distribution sucks - Hue are the likely breakout in my eyes - they have the best manufacturing to me and a few decent bits of kit. ZTE are following the old HTC model (OEM to standalone maker) - this will take longer to mature but they have shown early promise.

HTC need to sort their lives out - they threw away their position in my eyes and now have a difficult path to get it back. If I was in charge I'd consider a smaller set of changes like ditching Sense and going extremely close to stock, sticking to 2 premier phones (Like Samsung), fast updates and a single midground option. They did this around Android 1/2.3 and it worked a treat. In my eyes they made a mistake with their lineup last year.

While Galaxys are great phones that leverage Samsungs strengths (and inhouse ability to make nearly all the parts) they could easily be matched by someone else. I expect google are thankful Samsung made the series of phones they did but I don't think they are all that worried currently. The top only have one way to go ;)
 
Problem is that Samsung can throw huge stacks of money at carriers to take their phones over rivals. Yes Samsung make good phones, but they are also able to reduce competition by throwing money at the market which others just can't match.
 
The reason they are so successful is largely due to their marketing/advertising

30k3fbm.jpg


Nexus18 said:
- Samsung's marketing/ads are very much like apple now, they build the hype up perfectly, have their own show for the phone, don't concentrate on talking about the hardware side of things too much (since the majority of average joes won't have a clue about this or/and don't even care about it), more the software side (just like apple)
- everywhere I go, all I see are galaxy note/GS 3 ads and iphone ads, even on TV there are far more ads for them than the HTC phones
- walk into any phone shop and the galaxy and note phones have their wee own stand (some even have a big TV purely to show the phone of.......)just like the iphones, where as all the other phones by htc, sony etc. are bunched together
- all the news sites no longer do their typical android VS iphone articles etc. it is mostly GS 3 VS iphone as if to say that the GS 3 is the only android phone....
- the court cases throughout the last year or 2 between apple and Samsung only benefited Samsung a lot in the end
- Samsung don't release updated models or good mid range and low range phones and they most certainly don't market/advertise them as much as the flagship
- nowhere as much brand awareness/presence as Samsung
- everyone and I mean EVERYONE has a GS 3 or iphone so the majority of people will just get whatever everyone else has due to the popularity

Even if Samsung were to bring the exact same phone as the GS 3 out again but with just a 1080P SAMOLED screen and everything else wasn't as good as the HtC one etc. it would still sell far more devices than either the htc one, xperia Z etc.

Regarding advertising, only ad I remember is the sky diving ad, which I liked :p :o But.........it was only ever for the one X, what about the one S and V and was very rarely on TV????
Click to expand...

So easy, the others just have to do what Samsung have done, copy Apple's marketing/advertising.

Iraklis F.C. said:
they should be worried of how crap the others are, update wise. Look at the latest motofail for example or the Sony Xperia's which are bound to get updated at best late April...Samsung is the best for a reason. Why hurt the successful and not help the weaker?
Click to expand...

I think motorola have changed their update stance with their new RAZR phones now, the 3 RAZR phones got the JB update around xmas time. Their problem is the concern for UK, which is awful, only now have they started selling the razr hd and give us a gimped version of the razr m i.e. razr i (which got the update a month or so ago)

Sony are terrible, although they at least provide updates to the majority of their phones.

HTC are very good granted rather slow too (they were the second quickest to provide the JB though and not just to 1 handset, but 3 or 4), but currently they have JB running on the most android phones so far (not including phones that came out with JB)

At the end of the day though, the majority of average joes couldn't care less about updates, heck a lot of them don't even have a clue about what android version the phone is running let alone when the next update is out.
 
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billysielu said:
what the LOL is that graph about, showing Samsung spending more on marketing than Coke.

misleading nonsense
Click to expand...

Pretty sure it isn't :)

http://www.asymco.com/2012/11/29/the-cost-of-selling-galaxies/

Also, here is another interesting graph/point:

However, advertising is not the only form of promotional spending. Samsung also pays commissions and “sales promotion“. The following chart shows the value of these sales promotions relative to the ad spending budgets above.
Click to expand...

pFk3fV2.png


The company also reports “Marketing Expenses” every quarter[1]. These figures appear to be the sum of Ad spending, Sales Promotions, Public Relations and a portion of “other” expenses as a part of SG&A.

When considering all marketing expenses, Samsung Electronics’ sales efforts begin to look quite astonishing.
Click to expand...

YykTofj.png
 
Nexus18 said:
The reason they are so successful is largely due to their marketing/advertising
Click to expand...

The chart you posted, is that advertising for the mobile division or the entire Samsung brand? If it's the latter I'm not sure what you're trying to show beyond they make a whole ton of stuff.
 
snapdragon said:
Samsung are this successful but only in partnership with google / android. I've owned the S1/2/3 but would not buy a samsung mobile if they branched out with a different OS.
Click to expand...

How do you know you're not going to like this different OS when you know nothing about it? :confused:

Personally I'd be quite pleased the more people focus on the device as a whole rather than what OS it runs but we're not quite there yet.
 
snapdragon said:
Samsung are this successful but only in partnership with google / android. I've owned the S1/2/3 but would not buy a samsung mobile if they branched out with a different OS.
Click to expand...

If they could develop a good OS and replace Android with it on the Galaxy line then I am sure it would sell bucket loads as most people might not even notice.
However the problem is that it would probably be close to impossible for them to do so and the later they leave it the harder it will get. It's just too late to get into the mobile game, at least until apps are replaced with web apps...
 
Nexus18 said:
I think motorola have changed their update stance with their new RAZR phones now, the 3 RAZR phones got the JB update around xmas time.
Click to expand...

the following will not be updated, contrary to earlier statements

https://motorola-global-gr.custhelp...JYYzQ3WVBqbCIsInNlc3Npb25JRCI6IlhjNDdZUGpsIn0.

only the Razr i was updated to JB, the razr,razr maxx will not (This device will remain on Android 4.0.4 (ICS). Thats the second time motorola does it, noway i am buying a moto mobile again without the Nexus logo on it.
 
Iraklis F.C. said:
the following will not be updated, contrary to earlier statements

https://motorola-global-gr.custhelp...JYYzQ3WVBqbCIsInNlc3Npb25JRCI6IlhjNDdZUGpsIn0.

only the Razr i was updated to JB, the razr,razr maxx will not (This device will remain on Android 4.0.4 (ICS). Thats the second time motorola does it, noway i am buying a moto mobile again without the Nexus logo on it.
Click to expand...

Yeah the old versions won't but the newer RAZR devices have got or are getting jellybean.

Can't say that I am surprised about the older razr devices and likewise won't touch a device of theirs unless it is a nexus/google device due to that.
 
DeathStorm said:
How do you know you're not going to like this different OS when you know nothing about it? :confused:

Personally I'd be quite pleased the more people focus on the device as a whole rather than what OS it runs but we're not quite there yet.
Click to expand...

Because as much as I loathe to admit it I'm tied into android, not financially as I would be with apple but I know my way around and I love it's functions.
 
Samsung have taken Android and given it a massive profile and brought it into the public eye.

HTC broke out Android with the Desire phone but unfortunately they rested on their laurels and didn't capitalize like they could've.

Samsung watched and learned and took a little bit off every manufacturer and totally dominated the market with their products. Google need not worry, I doubt they will break out and create their own mutated version of Android like Amazon did.

Other manufacturers should learn from each other and try to emulate Samsung. Sony totally suck at software updates, HTC are somewhat slow but very careful and test their firmware updates righteously hence the delayed speed of their updates. Motorola well, let's not go there, Customer Service isn't exactly their forte and there aren't any countries other than USA as far as they are concerned. Their hardware is top notch, let's hope their fortunes change with the "X" phone as this needs to be a game changer for both Moto and Samsung.

Samsung are superb when it comes to releasing software updates but their coding is rather slapdash and often buggy. You only have to look at the threads over at XDA and see what I'm talking about, and let's not mention the dreaded "Sudden Death Syndrome" that has plagued many users all over the world but somehow has escaped the attention of the National Press.

Heaven forbid if it happened to Apple, people would be jumping all over them.

I for one won't hesitate getting a S4 when it's released but my heart says buck the trend and don't follow everyone else, we'll have to wait and see what happens. All I know the S4 will raise and further strengthen Samsung's position in the smart phone world.
 
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