iPhone 6 will likely launch in September. In the months leading up to the launch, smartphone sales (of high end phones) will drop as people are waiting to see what the iPhone 6 will be like. Then when the iPhone 6 does launch, it will dominate sales right through the holiday season and into the new year.
The real problem for Samsung (and HTC or LG) is for the first time ever Apple will be competing directly in their space - large screen phones. And outside of a larger screen, there's really nothing special about a GS5, LG G3 or HTC One that make them stand out. Put next to an iPhone 6 and Apples superior attention to detail and build quality, these competing phones are going to look pretty crappy.
This story will reveal all the news outlets that spin anti-Apple pro-Samsung garbage (ahm, Bloomberg). There's no good way to put this except to not print it or gloss it over with predictions about next quarter (ahem, Bloomberg).
You guys speak of innovation and Apple, but honestly, what innovation have they supplied to the smartphone market? They keep making their phones slimmer, upgrading internals with better chips, increasing screen resolution, and now following Samsung, they are finally increasing their screen size to something respectable. You think that innovation is slimming down and making a screen bigger, big whoop.
Ok- ill bite.
Even as little as last year- doing a 64-bit processor in the mobile world. That's huge. So big in fact that Samsung came out a week later and publicly said "we'll have 64 bit too soon!" However- here we are, almost a year later- with nothing in sight except for a promise. If you can't understand why the move to 64-bit and the development of that chip isn't groundbreaking, then we don't need to continue the conversation.
Although, in your eyes, I see how that can be minor. You're thinking iPod, or the revolution of the smartphone with iPhone. Or a tablet that finally caught on and look at the advances now In that field. I think everyone- even competitors and trolls- can agree all three of those were huge innovations.
Now please answer- should apple "innovate" with a brand new product category annually? Or is it a once every 5 year thing? Please list three consumer products that were completely revolutionary and innovative from any company- not even tech related- in the past 15 years. When you can't list a company- then you can, as tallest says, shut up and go away.
SS is trapped in the Android race to the bottom. and there's no escape.
but its public statement doesn't break out the results for just its phone/tablet/computer/accessories sales, so we don't know if that part of its business is losing money or still generating some profit. overall, SS still makes a heck of a lot of $'s.
but seeing them whine about being undercut by cheap Chinese knock-offs of their products is delicious indeed. sauce for the goose ...
Though I agree that Samsung (like others, it should be noted) have largely copied apple after the debut of the iphone- Samsung has something viable up its sleeves. Imagine a Samsung phone with Tizen, not android. Apple has homekit, and naturally google is following suit with whatever terrible interfaced copycat kit they have. But Samsung makes cars, tools, computers, washers, dryers, tellys, a/c, and other home appliances. If they make Tizen secure- they can let you automate your home cheaply and without the google data collecting BS. Samsung is potentially sitting on an easy to configure goldmine.
You guys speak of innovation and Apple, but honestly, what innovation have they supplied to the smartphone market? They keep making their phones slimmer, upgrading internals with better chips, increasing screen resolution, and now following Samsung, they are finally increasing their screen size to something respectable. You think that innovation is slimming down and making a screen bigger, big whoop.
The writing is all over the wall. iPhone holds 42% of the market in the US as of May 2014. How can one phone capture and hold so much share in a commoditized market? How can a luxury product dominate while up against entire platforms of competing devices?
When a walled garden becomes large enough, it becomes a rainforest. A rainforest creates its own weather just like Apple's ecosystem creates its own economy. Samsung has hit a brick wall. It copied Apple and that took it far, but the music has stopped and the party is over. Samsung is simply unable to keep pace with Apple innovation.
This story will reveal all the news outlets that spin anti-Apple pro-Samsung garbage (ahm, Bloomberg). There's no good way to put this except to not print it or gloss it over with predictions about next quarter (ahem, Bloomberg).
no, you just don't understand. these SS results prove even more that Apple is in trouble! Because, something. just wait until Bloomberg exposes the truth!
Samsung really only ever had one gimmick that worked. Big screens. It was simply a matter before they ran out screen sizes or people got tired of going larger.
The entire reason why Samsung phones dominated the smartphone market, is that they were first to push screen sizes for smartphones. They offered screen sizes in every size imaginable. The big bright colors + $99/Buy1Get1Free promotions attracted customers by the millions. Now that those customers have gotten used to larger screens.. and other manufacturers have offer similar large screen options.. There's no reason for these customers to stay loyal to Samsung phones. What real reasons does a S3/S4 owner have to upgrade to the S5? Or a Note1/2 owner to the Note3? They look almost exactly alike and the screen size is very much similar.
Expect things to get MUCH worse for Samsung come September. There are many iPhone people who bought a Samsung phone simply because of the bigger screen. And those people never truly converted from iPhone experience. They are easy to pick out, as they will own a Samsung mobile phone but still use an iPad for tablet use where screen size isn't as important. Expect millions of them to come running back to Apple.. as they finally get to use the mobile OS they prefer.. on a smartphone's screen that is 4.7" and 5.5".
It's kinda freaky when I think about it. Just last year, I was having a discussion at Cnet, and this guy accurately predicted (in hindsight) that moving forward, Google would become more closed, Apple would fall in market share but actually become more profitable, while Samsung would increase in market share but drop in profits.
It makes sense now that I think about it. Samsung simply grew too large too soon. They insisted on releasing so many models so quickly even though technology itself doesn't improve that quickly. That's why you get gimmicks like a heart-rate monitor that sports just a 50% accuracy rate (unacceptable for what is being touted as a medical / health feature). It's like that runner who decided to sprint right at the start of a long marathon just to wow the crowd. Now Samsung is starting to run out of steam and ideas, and at a bad time too. Apple is expected to release two larger iPhone models and iOS 8 is shaping up to be a major release in terms of features and functionality.
Samsung - don't blame anyone. You are simply reaping what you have sown.
Here's what I wrote last year after the iPhone 5C and 5S came out:
Apple's Chess Moves:
Apple leaves open the less profitable lower cost market to Samsung and others, who must constantly evolve their designs in an effort to find a niche with some uptake against the iPhone.
Samsung was forced to incorporate 4G radios even though the then-current technology drained your battery much faster, huge screens even though they make the phones unwieldy, many separate models that keep the cost of goods high and profits slim, and a third party OS that places Samsung at the mercy of Google/Motorola, creates fragmentation of the customer experience with few customers able to move forward to the latest version, and affectively commoditizes the entire universe of phones using it.
Meanwhile, Apple, with just three models (4S, 5C, and 5S) with just two screen sizes (3.5” and 4”) captures the majority of worldwide profits in the Smartphone market.
How is it that Apple, with its vastly superior OS and integrated experience across iPhones, iPads, iPods, and Macs, is NOT thinking several moves ahead. Samsung is playing the game Apple wants them to play. Among Apple's next moves will be incorporation of a larger display, taking away from Samsung and others the only differentiator they currently enjoy.
All those iPhone sales create new customers for the Apple ecosystem, the stickiest ecosystem by a very, very wide margin. Apple sees the world differently from how other companies see it. Apple realizes that significant advances in technology occur on a frequency of about 18 - 24 months, so it designs the very best phone that the current batch of production-ready technologies will allow, combining their unique design sense to produce an elegant and minimalist product. Then they sell that product, refreshing it once, for an entire technology cycle, knowing that during that cycle nothing will significantly displace it (meaning nothing so significant to cause Apple's customers to defect before the end of the cycle). Yes, during a cycle, Samsung and other competitors will employ the evolutionary scattershot approach to create a whole host of product offerings, all utilizing the same current-generation technologies, but since these are mere variants on a theme (larger screen, for example), they will primarily capture new customers, with relatively few defectors from the Apple camp. Of course, the downside of the scattershot evolutionary approach is that it requires a bigger R&D expenditure and shorter product cycles, both of which reduce the profitability of Apple's competition. Not to mention commoditization in the market, further reducing profitability. Apple chooses not to join that march to the bottom. It's history, and current profitability, suggest that Apple has chosen the correct path. The next two years will see the true power of Apple's quiet strategies.
This is business 101, which Wall Street seems to love as a strategy which will fail in the end but Wall Street could care less if Samsung is around 2 yrs from now.
When your whole business model is base on being the lowest cost and high volumes, you will always have your lunch eaten from the bottom by some other guy who is always willing to take less profits to get more of your volume. It is the classic case of race to the bottom and who can get there first. Samsung can never get there since their overhead is far too high considering their Chinese competitors.
Apple Strategy has always been great products at a high value to the customers, it is hard to drag this to the bottom, the only way to beat this strategy is to have a better product which has a higher value at the same or lesser cost. No one has been able to step up to the plate on this one.
May be someone can site another example, but I believe this is the first time where the Apple Strategy has been this successful from the stand point of one company controlling the largest majority of the profits, it is usually the Samsung strategy that has a number of companies all jockeying to control the lion share of the volume and profits. I think this is what Wall Street has been thinking that Apple Strategy was unsustainable. They expect Apple to join the fight at the bottom,similar to what they did with ipods, but in the ipod space there was not group battling to the bottom, Apple just stepped in and took over with no price war to even consider.
Usually companies deploying the Apple Strategy stay small and only garner a small amount of the over business and profits.
I can be. Because of Samsung's shady dealings with Apple and their offensive marketing in the cellphone arena I actively avoided buying their televisions for my last two television purchases. Samsung's mobile division's marketing strategy has an impact on the company as a whole beyond simply losing profits in the mobile market.
That's fine and it's fine for all the Apple fans to have decided that they "hate" Samsung, but the reality is that Samsung is the leader in TV and just about everyone else in the market is hurting badly and have cut back their TV lines. I don't know whether or not Samsung makes any profit out of their TV business, but no one else does. Samsung has killed Sony and Panasonic in this market, both of whom have cut back their lines. Panasonic made great plasma TVs (as did Pioneer, with their Kuro line), but they make them no more. Sony has spun off the TV division and is concentrating on expensive 4K sets (which aren't selling well) and Panasonic has a line of undistinguished LCDs.
And what you do (or what I do) personally is certainly not necessarily representative of the market as a whole. In fact, the actions of just about anyone on a site like this are not representative of the market.
And let's not forget that even though it was far less than last year and far less than what analysts expected, Samsung still made $7 billion in profits in the quarter. That makes them smaller than Apple, but still a very large and successful company. Does that excuse them from copying Apple's designs? No. But it doesn't change the fact that any company who can earn $30 billion in profits a year is a very successful company.
You guys speak of innovation and Apple, but honestly, what innovation have they supplied to the smartphone market? They keep making their phones slimmer, upgrading internals with better chips, increasing screen resolution, and now following Samsung, they are finally increasing their screen size to something respectable. You think that innovation is slimming down and making a screen bigger, big whoop.
I was trying to find and article I read a while back from someone who seemed to be a very capable engineer describing how the (original) iPhone display would fail (the capacitive elements would degraded quickly over short use, or something like that) over time and that Apple would have a massive recall on their hands. Not knowing that Apple's engineers has figured out the problems he had not... oh well.
Comments
Samsung is going to have 2 more lousy quarters.
iPhone 6 will likely launch in September. In the months leading up to the launch, smartphone sales (of high end phones) will drop as people are waiting to see what the iPhone 6 will be like. Then when the iPhone 6 does launch, it will dominate sales right through the holiday season and into the new year.
The real problem for Samsung (and HTC or LG) is for the first time ever Apple will be competing directly in their space - large screen phones. And outside of a larger screen, there's really nothing special about a GS5, LG G3 or HTC One that make them stand out. Put next to an iPhone 6 and Apples superior attention to detail and build quality, these competing phones are going to look pretty crappy.
This story will reveal all the news outlets that spin anti-Apple pro-Samsung garbage (ahm, Bloomberg). There's no good way to put this except to not print it or gloss it over with predictions about next quarter (ahem, Bloomberg).
You guys speak of innovation and Apple, but honestly, what innovation have they supplied to the smartphone market?
Smartphones: Before and after the iPhone
Even as little as last year- doing a 64-bit processor in the mobile world. That's huge. So big in fact that Samsung came out a week later and publicly said "we'll have 64 bit too soon!" However- here we are, almost a year later- with nothing in sight except for a promise. If you can't understand why the move to 64-bit and the development of that chip isn't groundbreaking, then we don't need to continue the conversation.
Although, in your eyes, I see how that can be minor. You're thinking iPod, or the revolution of the smartphone with iPhone. Or a tablet that finally caught on and look at the advances now In that field. I think everyone- even competitors and trolls- can agree all three of those were huge innovations.
Now please answer- should apple "innovate" with a brand new product category annually? Or is it a once every 5 year thing? Please list three consumer products that were completely revolutionary and innovative from any company- not even tech related- in the past 15 years. When you can't list a company- then you can, as tallest says, shut up and go away.
I hope Samsung's downward spiral continues. They truly deserve it.
Making fun of iPhone owners (and potential customers), not helping.
Being under the microscope to create their own product, and not copy Apple, not helping.
Sketchy quality control - not helping
Lying to everyone - not helping
Being an all-around scummy company that rips of everyone's IP - not helping.
Being Samsung - definitely not helping.
So you’re blind, deaf, and just came out of a coma. Rough life.
Shut up and go away.
SS is trapped in the Android race to the bottom. and there's no escape.
but its public statement doesn't break out the results for just its phone/tablet/computer/accessories sales, so we don't know if that part of its business is losing money or still generating some profit. overall, SS still makes a heck of a lot of $'s.
but seeing them whine about being undercut by cheap Chinese knock-offs of their products is delicious indeed. sauce for the goose ...
Samsung is potentially sitting on an easy to configure goldmine.
You guys speak of innovation and Apple, but honestly, what innovation have they supplied to the smartphone market? They keep making their phones slimmer, upgrading internals with better chips, increasing screen resolution, and now following Samsung, they are finally increasing their screen size to something respectable. You think that innovation is slimming down and making a screen bigger, big whoop.
Clueless idiot of the week award.
When a walled garden becomes large enough, it becomes a rainforest. A rainforest creates its own weather just like Apple's ecosystem creates its own economy. Samsung has hit a brick wall. It copied Apple and that took it far, but the music has stopped and the party is over. Samsung is simply unable to keep pace with Apple innovation.
http://halifaxbloggers.ca/straighttech/2014/06/a-rainforest-posing-as-a-walled-garden/
This story will reveal all the news outlets that spin anti-Apple pro-Samsung garbage (ahm, Bloomberg). There's no good way to put this except to not print it or gloss it over with predictions about next quarter (ahem, Bloomberg).
no, you just don't understand. these SS results prove even more that Apple is in trouble! Because, something. just wait until Bloomberg exposes the truth!
Samsung really only ever had one gimmick that worked. Big screens. It was simply a matter before they ran out screen sizes or people got tired of going larger.
The entire reason why Samsung phones dominated the smartphone market, is that they were first to push screen sizes for smartphones. They offered screen sizes in every size imaginable. The big bright colors + $99/Buy1Get1Free promotions attracted customers by the millions. Now that those customers have gotten used to larger screens.. and other manufacturers have offer similar large screen options.. There's no reason for these customers to stay loyal to Samsung phones. What real reasons does a S3/S4 owner have to upgrade to the S5? Or a Note1/2 owner to the Note3? They look almost exactly alike and the screen size is very much similar.
Expect things to get MUCH worse for Samsung come September. There are many iPhone people who bought a Samsung phone simply because of the bigger screen. And those people never truly converted from iPhone experience. They are easy to pick out, as they will own a Samsung mobile phone but still use an iPad for tablet use where screen size isn't as important. Expect millions of them to come running back to Apple.. as they finally get to use the mobile OS they prefer.. on a smartphone's screen that is 4.7" and 5.5".
It's kinda freaky when I think about it. Just last year, I was having a discussion at Cnet, and this guy accurately predicted (in hindsight) that moving forward, Google would become more closed, Apple would fall in market share but actually become more profitable, while Samsung would increase in market share but drop in profits.
It makes sense now that I think about it. Samsung simply grew too large too soon. They insisted on releasing so many models so quickly even though technology itself doesn't improve that quickly. That's why you get gimmicks like a heart-rate monitor that sports just a 50% accuracy rate (unacceptable for what is being touted as a medical / health feature). It's like that runner who decided to sprint right at the start of a long marathon just to wow the crowd. Now Samsung is starting to run out of steam and ideas, and at a bad time too. Apple is expected to release two larger iPhone models and iOS 8 is shaping up to be a major release in terms of features and functionality.
Samsung - don't blame anyone. You are simply reaping what you have sown.
Here's what I wrote last year after the iPhone 5C and 5S came out:
Apple's Chess Moves:
Apple leaves open the less profitable lower cost market to Samsung and others, who must constantly evolve their designs in an effort to find a niche with some uptake against the iPhone.
Chickens coming home to roost but still laying eggs.
This is business 101, which Wall Street seems to love as a strategy which will fail in the end but Wall Street could care less if Samsung is around 2 yrs from now.
When your whole business model is base on being the lowest cost and high volumes, you will always have your lunch eaten from the bottom by some other guy who is always willing to take less profits to get more of your volume. It is the classic case of race to the bottom and who can get there first. Samsung can never get there since their overhead is far too high considering their Chinese competitors.
Apple Strategy has always been great products at a high value to the customers, it is hard to drag this to the bottom, the only way to beat this strategy is to have a better product which has a higher value at the same or lesser cost. No one has been able to step up to the plate on this one.
May be someone can site another example, but I believe this is the first time where the Apple Strategy has been this successful from the stand point of one company controlling the largest majority of the profits, it is usually the Samsung strategy that has a number of companies all jockeying to control the lion share of the volume and profits. I think this is what Wall Street has been thinking that Apple Strategy was unsustainable. They expect Apple to join the fight at the bottom,similar to what they did with ipods, but in the ipod space there was not group battling to the bottom, Apple just stepped in and took over with no price war to even consider.
Usually companies deploying the Apple Strategy stay small and only garner a small amount of the over business and profits.
I can be. Because of Samsung's shady dealings with Apple and their offensive marketing in the cellphone arena I actively avoided buying their televisions for my last two television purchases. Samsung's mobile division's marketing strategy has an impact on the company as a whole beyond simply losing profits in the mobile market.
That's fine and it's fine for all the Apple fans to have decided that they "hate" Samsung, but the reality is that Samsung is the leader in TV and just about everyone else in the market is hurting badly and have cut back their TV lines. I don't know whether or not Samsung makes any profit out of their TV business, but no one else does. Samsung has killed Sony and Panasonic in this market, both of whom have cut back their lines. Panasonic made great plasma TVs (as did Pioneer, with their Kuro line), but they make them no more. Sony has spun off the TV division and is concentrating on expensive 4K sets (which aren't selling well) and Panasonic has a line of undistinguished LCDs.
And what you do (or what I do) personally is certainly not necessarily representative of the market as a whole. In fact, the actions of just about anyone on a site like this are not representative of the market.
And let's not forget that even though it was far less than last year and far less than what analysts expected, Samsung still made $7 billion in profits in the quarter. That makes them smaller than Apple, but still a very large and successful company. Does that excuse them from copying Apple's designs? No. But it doesn't change the fact that any company who can earn $30 billion in profits a year is a very successful company.
You guys speak of innovation and Apple, but honestly, what innovation have they supplied to the smartphone market? They keep making their phones slimmer, upgrading internals with better chips, increasing screen resolution, and now following Samsung, they are finally increasing their screen size to something respectable. You think that innovation is slimming down and making a screen bigger, big whoop.
I was trying to find and article I read a while back from someone who seemed to be a very capable engineer describing how the (original) iPhone display would fail (the capacitive elements would degraded quickly over short use, or something like that) over time and that Apple would have a massive recall on their hands. Not knowing that Apple's engineers has figured out the problems he had not... oh well.
I found some other good reads instead:
http://adage.com/article/al-ries/iphone-fail/117355/
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone
http://suckbusters2.blogspot.com/2007/06/apple-iphone-debut-to-flop-product-to.html
And yet, people still try to predict the future...