[Pseudo Follow Up] Samsung's Rapid Rise Displayed in Small Infographic

[dgstorm]

Here's an interesting bit of info straight from Samsung that serves as a pseudo follow up to our previous story about their market dominance. Here's an infographic that briefly illustrates Samsung's rapid rise to power in the Android world. Apparently, Samsung has now sold over 30% of all smartphones world-wide, which equates to 213 Million shipments. To give you some perspective, this is more than the entire population of Brazil (the world's fifth largest populace).

With the Samsung Galaxy S IV unveiling coming in March, Samsung looks poised to increase this dominance.

 

[gadgetrants]

I'm gonna try out some speculative reasoning, and see if it leads anywhere plausible...

...once upon a time, a little company called Apple produced a commercial, borrowing from the theme of George Orwell's 1984:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R706isyDrqI[/video]

Of course, a few decades (and CEOs) later, that little company became huge and hugely successful. Naturally, the smart people (i.e., Android owners) learned to hate the successful company, for many reasons, but in part because of the incredible hypocrisy between Apple's 1984 self-portrait, and what they ultimately became. That is, the dominating, monopolistic, controlling company that Apple themselves mocked in the beginning.

So today I'm wondering: if Samsung unseats Apple as the consumer electronics (well, I mean mostly cell-phone) reigning king, will we grow to resent and hate them too?

My first instinct is to say, "That's impossible. The Samsung business model is 10,000 times more open than Apple's (plus a dozen other differences, like Samsung doesn't produce it's own proprietary OS)." That might be true, but I think sometimes it's just fun to hate Apple because so many sheeple love them. I dunno, I think it could happen.

-Matt

 

[androidlearner]

My first instinct is to say, "That's impossible. The Samsung business model is 10,000 times more open than Apple's (plus a dozen other differences, like Samsung doesn't produce it's own proprietary OS)."

-Matt

My response to this is... Tizen. They are experimenting.


Sent from RAZR Maxx FlyingJelly

 

[jseah]

And there is also this interesting article

Why Google is worried about Samsung's Android dominance - The Week

Which talks about how Google may be worried that Samsung is getting too big. Apparently, it all comes down to ad dollars. According to the article, Google pays 10 percent of the Android ad revenue it receives to the smartphone manufacturer. And they may be worried that with Samsung becoming more and more popular, Samsung may want to re-negotiate to get a bigger piece of the pie.

 

[gadgetrants]

And there is also this interesting article

Why Google is worried about Samsung's Android dominance - The Week

Which talks about how Google may be worried that Samsung is getting too big. Apparently, it all comes down to ad dollars. According to the article, Google pays 10 percent of the Android ad revenue it receives to the smartphone manufacturer. And they may be worried that with Samsung becoming more and more popular, Samsung may want to re-negotiate to get a bigger piece of the pie.

Thanks for the link, that was a great read. And on a side note, Samsung's success is all the more impressive when you remember how dismal things looked last year, after the initial ruling against them. In spite of "losing" they have considerable momentum.

Still, I really like conspiracy theories, and somehow wonder if the newly-elected President of South Korea might have brokered some kind of backroom, sweetheart deal with Samsung (does anybody remember the fake cloning claims out of South Korea, about a decade ago?). Competition is intense -- there's military pressure from the North -- I just have a deep, gut feeling that there is a scandal waiting to erupt behind Samsung's success. FWIW, it's the same feeling I had after Armstrong's 5th or 6th tour victory. Just seems...too magical.

-Matt