Hacker News Reader

Comment by thomasahle | Hacker News Reader

I think the main difference is that Samsung is primarily a hardware company. Their phones are showcases of what they can do with screens, sensors etc.. Once they have shown that, companies like Apple will buy said screens from Samsung.

View on HN

And in the meantime Samsung's credibility will sank. I don't buy it that they did it to showcase the technology. They could have done the same with a prototype showcased to a selected few. They went loud in order to awe the public and it blew in their face. Which sends the message that they don't really care about quality. Good luck the next time they'll try to sell a high-end phone. Perceived value is very important for a company's image.

They sold phones that were exploding into flames just a few years ago. Aside from some memes it didn't hurt their brand.

Samsung is having a lot of quality issues lately. There is a problem with the S10, which causes it to permanently lose connectivity, requiring a device swap. It seems to affect all carriers, but for some reason is affecting Sprint more than others. Of the 7 people I know on Sprint with an S10, all have had to swap them out for replacements.

Current rumor is "there is a RF transmission issue that burns up the modem, quite literally, so then it won't read anymore. Can happen on any band. The software releases are supposed to prevent this from happening. But if your device has succumbed to this already, you're hosed." https://s4gru.com/forums/topic/7899-galaxy-s10-family-discus...

> Samsung is primarily a hardware company.

As is Apple

Would it be more accurate to say Samsung is a hardware component company then?

Close to 50-50 according to their breakdown of revenue by business division [0]. Assuming "consumer electronics" and "mobile communications" mostly refer to selling finished products, and the other groups like "semiconductors" are for selling components.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/630434/samsung-quarterly...

Samsung is a big and diverse company, not really comparable to a more focused company like Apple. In addition to smartphones and components, they’re the largest manufacturer of TVs and a big manufacturer of appliances. If you look at the larger Samsung group, and not just Samsung Electronics, it includes one of the largest shipbuilders in the world, construction, life insurance, and more.

I think there's still a fundamental difference in Samsung's focus on competing on hardware, while Apple seems to put more emphasis on building a custom software ecosystem, rarely caring (or perhaps needing) to be at the cutting-edge of phone hardware specifications.

Apple sell a unified package of hardware and software. An iPhone without iOS is just another flagship phone with mediocre battery life and a good camera. Many (most) of the advantages of MacOS disappear if Apple supported the same range of commodity hardware as Microsoft.

Samsung can't credibly claim that their software is a selling point; for Apple, it's an integral part of their business.

Apple doesn't do the sort of in depth R&D into things like displays that Samsung does. They do it with their A series chips, but for displays, modems etc. they source from the likes of Samsung etc.

You sure about that?

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2018/03/19/apple-mi...

Yes, am sure, they may have future plans to develop something in house, but I was talking about what's going on currently. I mean they probably have a lot of plans; develop their own modem, switch Macs to ARM etc. but that's not the reality on the ground at the moment.

Also, there's a lot of display tech that Samsung has, so Apple would either have to license these, driving the component cost higher, or work around them, which seems quite difficult.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com