bulldogs

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  • Apple requests another $179 million in supplemental damages from Samsung

    I am curious. Let us say that Samsung hadn't infringed on Apple's IP. How much would it have changed, really? Does anyone believe that Apple would have ever enjoyed 90%, 80%, 70% or even 60% market share? Especially overseas where carriers do not subsidize devices? And even in America and Europe where a certain percentage of the population either just doesn't like Apple or simply likes to be contrarian? Apple was never going to dominate the smartphone and tablet market the way that they dominated the music player market. And in the music player market, no one was capable of coming up with a true competitor to either the hardware or to iTunes, plus Apple addressed the low end market with the iPod Shuffle for music players. 

    So there was always going to be a viable second OS, especially addressing the overseas and low end markets. And Blackberry, Symbian, WebOS, Firefox OS, Ubuntu, Tizen (which was acquired by Samsung, not developed by them), Microsoft etc. all had their shots and failed. The reasons: lack of technical expertise in mobile Internet technology, lack of apps and ecosystem, lack of name branding/marketing, not enough financial backing. Only Google, it seems, had the combination of technical acumen, app store with a lot of third party developers, a globally known name brand and deep pockets and that was why they succeeded while others didn't.

    And don't overplay Samsung's role. After all, Samsung made and marketed Windows phones too (as well as Bada and then acquiring Tizen). Not just Samsung: LG and HTC made Windows Phones also, and the HTC One Windows 8 device was aesthetically beautiful. Oh yes, and then there was Nokia, the company that ruled the mobile phone space pre-iPhone who failed with first their own Symbian smart device OS and then after investing heavily in marketing and R&D for Windows Mobile.

    So, Samsung's success was more about Android than Samsung (the many good features that originated in Samsung's despised TouchWiz and were later put in Google Android notwithstanding), meaning that it had more to do with Google than with Samsung's copying Apple. To put it another way: it was mostly due to Samsung covering bases before Apple could get there such as being able to sell to all carriers while Apple was an AT&T exclusive and then offering larger phones and smaller tablets while Apple delayed in delivering both. And it was also due to their rising to the top of the Android heap by spending way more on advertising and on carrier and store agreements than HTC and Motorola who could simply not afford it and also LG and Sony who CAN afford it but for some strange reason chooses to just sit back and allow first Samsung and now Huawei and Xiaomi to eat their lunches. 

    I suppose that getting $180 million because Samsung has continued to sell the ancient Galaxy 2 (with its 4.3 inch screen and 2.3 - though upgradeable to 4.1! - operating system) is nice. But the truth is that Samsung is becoming less relevant anyway. They are now #3 in China behind Xiaomi and Huawei. Huawei has now joined Apple and Samsung in selling 100 smartphones annually - and they reached that mark long before Christmas so they may end the year at 115 million - and in the process has leapfrogged Xiaomi, and will start selling smartphones in the US by March of 2016 along with another Chinese company LeTV. While Huawei, LeTV and Huawei will likely not take many smartphone sales away from Samsung in the US due to lack of carrier agreements, they will in India and Africa, where the 3 Chinese companies will not only sell devices but are also building out the Internet and mobile infrastructure, so that in those regions they will not only sell phones and tablets, but also the Internet and mobile data plans that the tablets use as they do in China. And when you consider that Huawei is already selling a decent number of phones in Europe, it can be said that Apple is continuing to dither about with Samsung while the market - the global market anyway ... the U.S. market is set with about half being Apple fans and the other half Samsung loyalists - is changing.
    cropr