Herbivore2

Apple can eliminate the ability for the Chinese manufacturers to compete in the mobile market by taking all of Samsung's OLED production capability. No other company is capable of producing high quality display panels in the capacity that Samsung can. 

The next version of the Pixel will likely revert back back to LCD. It will be interesting to see the Google apologists explain that one away. 

And it isn't just the display panels. NAND memory is constrained. Sony is positioning itself as a supplier primarily to Apple for digital imaging sensors. 

Android is going to be squeezed heavily by the general lack of hardware capability outside of Samsung and Apple. 

Samsung is well on its way in its long term goal of displacing Android with Tizen. It is happening in wearables and will soon be coming to the smartphone arena. 

Samsung and Apple by working together can eliminate the viability of android as a mobile platform. 

I suspect that Cook doesn't see things that way given his desires to develop LG into a legimate competitor. There's essentially no way that it can happen now. Samsung has far too much of a lead. LG also doesn't manufacture cutting edge flash memory products. Apple has to work with Samsung anyhow.

What seems to be happening is that the Chinese manufacturers will be paying far more for access to the hardware technologies, selling their handsets at a loss to compete with the likes of Samsung and Apple. 

Samsung and Apple are about to put additional and considerable distance in the hardware capabilities of their own products and the rest of the device manufacturers. Since Google has already cast the dice in favor of the Chinese, they are now forced to watch the likes of Oppo, Huawei and Xiaomi flounder in attempting to compete. If Samsung moves the US and Europe over to its Tizen products, Android is essentially relegated to the Chinese market where the Google play store and Google services are non-existent.  

Such a great decision by Google to alienate their most capable hardware manufacturer. I doubt that there is anything that Goolge can do these days to change Samsung's intent with Tizen. 

Porting software over to Tizen will be far easier than developing hardware capabilities to compete with the likes of Samsung. In fact, there seems to be a lot of activity in bringing software apps to the Tizen based Watch these days. 

Such arrogance on Google's part to think that Samsung's hardware capabilities were trumped by Google in software. It's going to bite Google. It won't be something that will heal either as Samsung is aiming right for the jugular. 

Samsung's Harman Kardon unit is building a unit prioritizing acoustics. It is the Invoke but will apparently run Cortana although Samsung could eventually bring Bixby to the unit. 

Samsung will work out the hiccups with Bixby. They are a very capable company. They just passed Intel in chip sales. They are on a roll with respect to NAND and OLED technologies. Bixby is software and software is easier to build than cutting edge hardware components. 

My Korean friends are quite enamored with Bixby. If Samsung duplicates that experience in English, and they very likely will, given their dedication and focus, it will be a game changer as it is integrated into the Samsung's flagship phones. Much like Siri is in the iPhone. 

The HomePod is interesting and I will very likely purchase one. However, I very much like my Samsung Gear S3 with LTE. If Samsung continues to build hardware like this, they are a real force to be reckoned with. 

Samsung and Apple are outstanding companies. They will be competitors, but together they will dominate mobile computing. Google is slowly losing android as a dominant platform as they have no answer to the hardware Samsung is planning. Microsoft is incapable and the Chinese manufacturers aren't even in the game anymore. They will be relegated to the lowest end of the market with limited memory, LCD panels, poor performance and poor battery life devices. That is the realm that Android is going to play in. Even Samsung's low end Tizen phones will have better capabilities. 

gatorguy said:

For a $21B investment they must be anticipating a crapload of those Samsung foldable screens! If there's anything to it I guess everyone selling smartphones is planning for "the next big thing": Compact foldable phones with huge displays? 

Just the demand from Samsung mobile and Apple would justify this investment. 

The other mobile device manufacturers are still going to be left in the cold. 

The entire mobile market is going to move to bendable and foldable devices. The real caveat is that they will only be available in large numbers from Samsung and Apple. LG can produce them also, but to a much smaller degree. The Chinese OEMs will have to pay through the nose to access the technology and cannot produce low cost devices to undercut Samsung's and Apple's offerings. Samsung is nearly untouchable now with respect to the technology. This is going to bite Google hard. Like getting caught in the jaw of an alligator. 

Short of a North Korean invasion, there will be only two dominant players in mobile. Samsung and Apple. Android is still going to be displaced. Samsung is committed to it and as the dominant components manufacturer with control of all of the critical component technologies, they are well-positioned to make it happen. It is already happening in the Android wear arena. Samsung continues to aggressively update and advance the Gear line while the android wear manufacturers are sluggish and poorly committed. The Gear S3 classic now comes with LTE. It is far better than anything made by Huawei, LG or Xiaomi. Manufacturers are actually decommitting from Android wear as Motorola has no plans to manufacture future watches. 

And with LTE, the Gear watches stomp all over the Android wear devices in battery life. Tizen runs like a champ on low end hardware also. 

Samsung knows where the market is headed. And they are pioneering the hardware to make it happen. Google hypes the software, but the fact remains unchanged, superior hardware is where the true advances come from. Software can only be written to the capabilities of the hardware. Samsung knows it. Apple knows it. Google is about to become painfully aware of it. 

Samsung is a fairly reliable company. They do make mistakes as the Note 7 battery issues made painfully obvious. However, they have producing OLED panels for several years now. I find this particular rumor hard to believe. 

Has anyone even looked at the facts? The litigants were primarily other US corporations. Including one who was a known abuser in the past, Microsoft. 

Google is abusing its dominance in search to make its own services competitive where they would not be otherwise. So much for their motto, "Don't be evil."  

The real issue isn't the fine. Google has 60 days to change their practices. If they don't, they will face additional fines which will be ongoing. 

Amd Google is by no means finished. There is the tax issue which is similar to the one Apple faced and it will very likely result in much larger fines. There is also the issue of Android. 

I personally never use Google search anymore. I do product searches on Amazon. For local services, I use Yelp. I do lots of voice searches using Siri or Amazon's Echo. I hope samsung brings Bixby to the Gear S3 line of watches. I will very likely be purchasing the HomePod when it is released for the superior acoustics. The Invoke by Samsung's Harman unit looks to be quite interesting also. 

Other than an occasional instructional YouTube video, I don't have any plans to use any other Google products. I don't "need" them and most certainly don't want them. 

Schmidt is worse than Gates even at Microsoft's worst. At least Gates has become a philanthropist. Schmidt does not even do that. And now he can try to figure out how to navigate Google out of the mess he has created. 

Google search is going to be forced to adopt a new model. Android is going to go into irrelevance once the FTC and Apple are finished with Qualcomm. Samsung is going to displace Android with Tizen, using Bixby for search. Cutting edge mobile CPUs will belong to Apple and Samsung. It means that Android gets relegated to poorly performing mobile devices. 

I for one won't miss Google when that day happens. Not one iota.