Google may pump $876M into LG Display to compete with likes of Apple iPhone in OLED

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  • Reply 21 of 24

    TLDR. Short version: Google is doomed.

    That's right. Nearly everyone agrees that there is room for two dominant mobile platforms. Samsung makes all of the critical components themselves and Apple produces many though not all of them also. And for the ones Apple cannot, they are turning to Samsung. 

    It leaves little breathing space for anyone else hardware wise. That includes Google. Samsung's superior hardware capabilities will render Google's software control obsolete. Just wait. The Koreans are relentless and patient. Google cannot win. Samsung is the only manufacture outside of Apple capable of turning a profit in hardware. When Samsung drives the other Android OEMs out of the market, what then for Google? Reliance on the Chinese govt to keep Huawei afloat? Huawei does not build OLED panels and will not in the foreseeable future. Samsung will dictate to Google the terms for inclusion of Android and the play store on Galaxy and Nexus devices. It certainly won't be the other way around. Why else is Google doing this? One word, desperation. They see what's coming. Care to tell me why folks should buy an Andfoid wear watch over the Samsung? Because there is no good reason. The Android wear devices are terrible designs. 

    I am an Apple fan but realize that competition is healthy. Samsung builds excellent hardware. So does Apple. Google's Pixel is overpriced and less capable than Samsung's Galaxy phones. Too bad the US version comes with the junky QCOM chip. The international version comes with the superior Exynos chip. The Pixel is also based on the inferior Snapdragon chip. At least with the Galaxy, one can get a hold of the international version for the better CPU. The Pixel? Out of luck. 

    The competition is between Apple and Samsung. Google needs to stop wasting resources and focus on YouTube and search. Otherwise Amazon and Facebook are more than willing to take the Crown Jewels from Google also. 

     Concede Android to Samsung. It's an inevitability anyway. With each passing year, Samsung's actions and Google's paltry reactions make the inevitability ever more clear. 
  • Reply 22 of 24
    maestro64 said:
    First, $900M is chump change considering the billions  Apple is investing into display technologies. This also shows why Google phones are not selling, they lack the control over the supply chain. HTC has no real control in the component market when they are not the final decision maker of parts end up in a Google phone. Component suppliers want a direct line of communication with the ultimate decision maker, not the company who just put the parts together, since they make decisions purely on costs.
    Well said. The 876 million investment into LG display is chump change in the grand scheme of things. Samsung and LG have many billions invested into OLED manufacturing. 

    Every time I see another article about JDI, Sharp, Sony, National/Panasonic, etc extol their move into OLED with a fraction of the investment, I just scratch my head. 

    Apple's OLED demand is huge. Samsung's components revenues are about to increase in a very major fashion. And with those profits, they will be re-investing in their display trchnology, lowering costs and increasing performance with better reliability. 

    NO ONE else is going to be able to take on Samsung. Not LG and especially not Google. Apple will have preferred access and the lowest costs outside of Samsung itself. 

    The smartphone industry is rapidly converging to two players, Apple and Samsung. This deal between Apple and Samsung will accelerate that trend. 

    Google can decide to play nice with Samsung and Apple and stick to search. But they won't. It means that Samsung will destroy Google's Android market. Samsung will either take control of Android outright or move off it and onto Tizen. With the best, most cost effective hardware of anyone outside of Apple, they can make it happen. 

    I have a Samsung Gear S3 frontier watch based on Tizen. It is a very nice piece of hardware. Far better than the Android wear garbage put out by LG and Huawei. And why is it that Samsung is building all of their non smartphone hardware to run on Tizen? They also build millions of Tizen based phones for Indian and Russian markets. In fact far more than Google is able to build Pixels for the Notth American market. There is a substantial Tizen base of software being built in India. 

    It is only a matter of time before Samsung takes over the Android marketplace. And they are going to do it with hardware. Because no one else is going to be able to keep up with them outside of Apple. Apple will be using Samsung components of course, but doing so guarantees lack of access to the other manufacturers like HTC, Huawei, Xiaomi and the like. It means Google is left with scraps in trying to compete in hardware. And making desperate and meaningless moves like the investment into LG display. 

    876 million is actually a relatively petty investment. They can't and won't be driving the volumes that Samsung and Apple smartphones will. Even if Huawei and Xiaomi are added in. None of them sell high end smartphones in numbers that Apple and samsung do. In fact Samsung sells more Tizen based phones to the Indian market in a year than Google has sold of its own branded smartphones in its entire history. And Samsung sells more Tizen based watches than the rest of the android OEMs combined. I cannot understand why Fitbit is considered a smartwatch. If they aren't considered, it is once again a two horse race. 

    The picture is becoming clear. And Google is going to find themselves in more and more of a desperate situation. AI is an oxymoron. It will never replace human insight and judgment. Computers are to enhance human capabilities, not take over for them. Google was always headed down the wrong path. 

    They seem to be realizing it now. The problem is that it's too late. Apple and Samsung always had the right perspective. And their lead is now too great to overcome. Even for a company like Google. 

    This one's going to fun to watch play out. Apple's competition isn't going away, it is just shifting. Instead of Google, it will be Samsung playing by the Apple model of vertical integration. Google thought the Microsoft model would work in smartphones. They are going to find out otherwise. It seems to be clear that they are seeing it. There's very little they can do about it now. 

    They cannot buy Samsung or they very likely would try. Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo acquisitions would be nixed by the Chinese govt. LG is also too big and a relatively minor Android player. 

    Google is in a bind. And the more they make these kinds of investments, the more evidence they provide to the notion that they truly are losing control of Android to Samsung. Bixby is about to displace Google's assistant on the upcoming Galaxy S8. Yes people can always download the assistant on the play store. How many will vs. just using Bixby instead?

    I have seen people use Samsung pay. I have never seen anyone, not a single person use Android pay. I even asked someone at Whole Foods why they chose Samsung pay instead of Android pay. They answered that it was convenient. It came with the phone and didn't require any extra steps and Samsung pay is accepted more places. 

    With that, it became clear to me that Samsung is going to own the second mobile platform outside of Apple. Google has no chance. There is no other company competitive with Samsung in components. And with the other dominant mobile platform taking all of the available supply of Samsung components, minor players like HTC, LG, and even Huawei won't be able to compete. 

    I don't know from where people in this forum get the idea that Samsung can do without Android OR that Tizen can be used in "premium" smartphones (read Galaxy S/Note series). If Samsung has such plans, it is only a pipe dream. There are just NO takers for Tizen powered phones for a cost of more than $100 even in India. Not sure from where you got the statistics that Samsung has sold more Tizen powered phones than Pixels. Even assuming that to be true, how much money Samsung made by selling those devices Vs HTC/Google made selling 2 million pixel phones? The latter would be greater than former because the former is a -Ve number, compared to latter which is a +Ve number. There is just NO place for a 3rd mobile OS as a competition against IOS/Android. Microsoft (a proper software company compared to Samsung who is a hardware company) had a chance with Windows Mobile, blew it already. There is just no scope for another OS to gain traction for at least next 5 years, if not more.
    And who exactly is going to manufacture the OLED panels for the other OEMs? Samsung's hardware R&D dwarfs Google's.

     The Pixel doesn't even break into the top 10 in sales anywhere. The Z3 by the way ranked number 4 worldwide. 

    http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/industry/13027-expansion-tizen-samsung-z3-tizen-smartphone-ranks-4th-sales-less-1-month-after

    Or perhaps this article is more to your liking. 

    http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2015/11/samsung-tizen-z3.html

    Samsung makes a whole range of products also from air conditioners to TVs to smart home devices and all ripe for Tizen in IoT. All it takes is one killer app that is dependent on Samsung hardware and Android is finished. It will come from a wearable device and IoT where Google is essentially a non-player. The atrocious Android wear watches aren't going to sell in any volume. 

    Wait until the Koreans develop the lithium air cell. Or another breakthrough hardware technology. And they make it available only on Tizen. Is Google leading the way in a single hardware category? They aren't. And they will be displaced. The Koreans are patient and relentless. Just watch and wait. The only thing that might derail Samsung is if the North Koreans go to war. If that happens none of this will matter anyway. And if the Russians go to war over Syria the OS battle won't matter either. 

    Make no mistake, Samsung has definite plans to displace Android. And as one of only two premier builder of components and finished products, it's an inevitability. Especially with the other premier builder using its major high end component exclusively guaranteeing the profits stay within Samsung, depriving the only other capable manufacturer, LG the development capital in producing a competitive product over the long term. Why else is Google stepping in to the tune of nearly a billion dollars. But that is a one time amount and doesn't even begin to address the enormous costs of the technology and maintaining competitiveness over the long term with Apple and Samsung seeking large quantities of devices sustainably, providing ongoing profits for Samsung to continue to reinvest in display technologies.

    Apple used its superior hardware capabilities to displace Microsoft from mobile. And Microsoft's dominance was far more complete than Google's Android is today. Google actually took advantage of Samsung to do the same in mobile. But Samsung is no longer giving Google a free pass. The Koreans are capable of building software that matches Google's Android. Google is emphatically NOT able to build hardware that matches Samsung's. Samsung's advantage will continue to grow and they will be the ONLY manufacturer capable of achieving large volume OLED panel production at prices and quality levels no one else will be able to match. Samsung can charge hefty prices for OLED panels that Google needs for its Pixels, and force them to price the device out of the market or compel Google to take major losses. The same is true of the other OEMs.  Sure, they can turn to LG. But it won't be long before LG's much lower volumes and lower prices/profits turn into a major disadvantage. 

    If Google is truly serious, they need to invest many billions. But then, the panels are only one component. Samsung manufactures state of the art NAND flash memory products, CPUs, baseband radios and the like. Their fabs are also cutting edge. I am waiting for Samsung to build a device that optimizes Tizen on Exynos chips much like Apple has done. I am certain it is coming, but their major investments in OLED and flash development were felt to be more important. All of the important pieces are now in place to make a serious run at establishing Tizen as the second major mobile OS and displace Android. Or are people unable to reason anymore. It's not just OLED panels that are in short supply. Flash memory is at a premium these days also. Ever wonder why the 128 GB version of the Pixel is in such short supply? The Galaxy S7 with 128 GB can be had readily and I suspect the same will be true for the S8. 

    And if Android is so secure in the marketplace, why the pressing need for Google to build its own hardware? And invest nearly a billion dollars into LG's OLED operations? Google cannot build enough Pixels to meet the minuscule demand for the device in the first place. And most of the panels going into the Chinese market devices don't contribute anything to Google's bottom line, being locked out of China anyway with the OEMs using a forked version of Android.  Google can't even compete with them for panels much less for flash memory. 

    Try again and explain how Google is going to keep Samsung from becoming the dominant second player in mobile devices outside of China? Because from my perspective they are doing all of the things they need to do to take that position while Google continues to flounder, trying to figure out what they really want to be when they grow up. Samsung is following through on a well developed and thought out plan while Google just reacts. 

    You are right, there isn't room for three mobile OS's. The problem is that Android won't be the second one.  I actually think that there could be room for three. There was once upon a time when the industry and pundits felt there was room for only a single OS, Windows. They were actually celebrating the death of the Macintosh. I saw the whole thing play out. And I saw how how Apple used their expertise in hardware to make the Macintosh relevant and drive iOS into dominance. I am now watching Samsung do precisely the same thing. Google can see it, but they really can't do anything about it. The LG investment will prove to be meaningless. 

    By the way, the Samsung Gear S3 frontier though bulky is a fantastic device. It runs on Tizen. You should try it before dissing on the OS. I plan on purchasing an Apple Watch once they put a baseband radio on it. For now the Samsung watch is a very nice piece of hardware. It supports Samsung pay and can make calls without having to carry a separate cell phone. The iOS app is fairly nice. Though it integrates better with the Galaxy S7, it still plays nicely on iOS. Devices like this are the future of computing. And only Apple and Samsung make compelling devices. The other OEMs do not. And Google itself is incapable. Android's days are in peril. Whether one wants to put his/her head in the sand. 

  • Reply 23 of 24

    I don't know from where people in this forum get the idea that Samsung can do without Android OR that Tizen can be used in "premium" smartphones (read Galaxy S/Note series). If Samsung has such plans, it is only a pipe dream. There are just NO takers for Tizen powered phones for a cost of more than $100 even in India. Not sure from where you got the statistics that Samsung has sold more Tizen powered phones than Pixels. Even assuming that to be true, how much money Samsung made by selling those devices Vs HTC/Google made selling 2 million pixel phones? The latter would be greater than former because the former is a -Ve number, compared to latter which is a +Ve number. There is just NO place for a 3rd mobile OS as a competition against IOS/Android. Microsoft (a proper software company compared to Samsung who is a hardware company) had a chance with Windows Mobile, blew it already. There is just no scope for another OS to gain traction for at least next 5 years, if not more.
    And who exactly is going to manufacture the OLED panels for the other OEMs? Samsung's hardware R&D dwarfs Google's.

     The Pixel doesn't even break into the top 10 in sales anywhere. The Z3 by the way ranked number 4 worldwide. 
    <Muthu:> How much money Samsung made selling those Z3s powered by Tizen? Is it -$10 million, because they had to discount them heavily to be able to sell them?

    http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/industry/13027-expansion-tizen-samsung-z3-tizen-smartphone-ranks-4th-sales-less-1-month-after

    Or perhaps this article is more to your liking. 

    http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2015/11/samsung-tizen-z3.html

    Samsung makes a whole range of products also from air conditioners to TVs to smart home devices and all ripe for Tizen in IoT. All it takes is one killer app that is dependent on Samsung hardware and Android is finished. It will come from a wearable device and IoT where Google is essentially a non-player. The atrocious Android wear watches aren't going to sell in any volume. 

    Wait until the Koreans develop the lithium air cell. Or another breakthrough hardware technology. And they make it available only on Tizen. Is Google leading the way in a single hardware category? They aren't. And they will be displaced. The Koreans are patient and relentless. Just watch and wait. The only thing that might derail Samsung is if the North Koreans go to war. If that happens none of this will matter anyway. And if the Russians go to war over Syria the OS battle won't matter either. 

    Make no mistake, Samsung has definite plans to displace Android. And as one of only two premier builder of components and finished products, it's an inevitability.

    <Muthu:> How would Samsung displace Android in "Premium" smartphones when they are unable to sell "low-end" Tizen powered phones at "mid-range" price tag? There are just NO takers for Tizen powered phones, once the pricetag goes above $150.

    Especially with the other premier builder using its major high end component exclusively guaranteeing the profits stay within Samsung, depriving the only other capable manufacturer, LG the development capital in producing a competitive product over the long term. Why else is Google stepping in to the tune of nearly a billion dollars. But that is a one time amount and doesn't even begin to address the enormous costs of the technology and maintaining competitiveness over the long term with Apple and Samsung seeking large quantities of devices sustainably, providing ongoing profits for Samsung to continue to reinvest in display technologies.

    Apple used its superior hardware capabilities to displace Microsoft from mobile. And Microsoft's dominance was far more complete than Google's Android is today. Google actually took advantage of Samsung to do the same in mobile. But Samsung is no longer giving Google a free pass. The Koreans are capable of building software that matches Google's Android. Google is emphatically NOT able to build hardware that matches Samsung's. Samsung's advantage will continue to grow and they will be the ONLY manufacturer capable of achieving large volume OLED panel production at prices and quality levels no one else will be able to match. Samsung can charge hefty prices for OLED panels that Google needs for its Pixels, and force them to price the device out of the market or compel Google to take major losses. The same is true of the other OEMs.  Sure, they can turn to LG. But it won't be long before LG's much lower volumes and lower prices/profits turn into a major disadvantage. 

    If Google is truly serious, they need to invest many billions. But then, the panels are only one component. Samsung manufactures state of the art NAND flash memory products, CPUs, baseband radios and the like. Their fabs are also cutting edge. I am waiting for Samsung to build a device that optimizes Tizen on Exynos chips much like Apple has done. I am certain it is coming, but their major investments in OLED and flash development were felt to be more important. All of the important pieces are now in place to make a serious run at establishing Tizen as the second major mobile OS and displace Android. Or are people unable to reason anymore. It's not just OLED panels that are in short supply. Flash memory is at a premium these days also. Ever wonder why the 128 GB version of the Pixel is in such short supply? The Galaxy S7 with 128 GB can be had readily and I suspect the same will be true for the S8. 

    <Muthu:> Samsung does not offer S7 with 128GB storage at all. Where did you get this theory from?

    And if Android is so secure in the marketplace, why the pressing need for Google to build its own hardware? And invest nearly a billion dollars into LG's OLED operations? Google cannot build enough Pixels to meet the minuscule demand for the device in the first place. And most of the panels going into the Chinese market devices don't contribute anything to Google's bottom line, being locked out of China anyway with the OEMs using a forked version of Android.  Google can't even compete with them for panels much less for flash memory. 

    <Muthu:> Because it is just a hobby for Google. They never took building hardware seriously, from the nexus days. They will never take building the hardware seriously in future as well. Simple as that.

    Try again and explain how Google is going to keep Samsung from becoming the dominant second player in mobile devices outside of China? Because from my perspective they are doing all of the things they need to do to take that position while Google continues to flounder, trying to figure out what they really want to be when they grow up. Samsung is following through on a well developed and thought out plan while Google just reacts.

    <Muthu:> Because Google does not even care whether Samsung is the second dominant player in mobile devices (china or not). It is all a story made up by you. Can you please share the link where google officially mentioned that they want to eliminate Samsung's domination in android world? 

    You are right, there isn't room for three mobile OS's. The problem is that Android won't be the second one.  I actually think that there could be room for three. There was once upon a time when the industry and pundits felt there was room for only a single OS, Windows. They were actually celebrating the death of the Macintosh. I saw the whole thing play out. And I saw how how Apple used their expertise in hardware to make the Macintosh relevant and drive iOS into dominance. I am now watching Samsung do precisely the same thing. Google can see it, but they really can't do anything about it. The LG investment will prove to be meaningless. 

    By the way, the Samsung Gear S3 frontier though bulky is a fantastic device. It runs on Tizen. You should try it before dissing on the OS. I plan on purchasing an Apple Watch once they put a baseband radio on it. For now the Samsung watch is a very nice piece of hardware. It supports Samsung pay and can make calls without having to carry a separate cell phone. The iOS app is fairly nice. Though it integrates better with the Galaxy S7, it still plays nicely on iOS. Devices like this are the future of computing. And only Apple and Samsung make compelling devices. The other OEMs do not. And Google itself is incapable. Android's days are in peril. Whether one wants to put his/her head in the sand. 


    edited April 2017
  • Reply 24 of 24
    badmonk said:
    Don't worry Samsung and Apple will suck all of the OLED oxygen out of the room.  Google will always be a bit player in this game.
    You mean Samsung getting wealthier both competing against and selling the parts for Iphone phones.  Now Apple dependent on Samsung because apple finally admits they must get screens from Samsung to stay competitive.
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