Why Samsung is about to become the smartphone king
gigaom.com
gigaom.com
The Software Advantage:
Samsung sent a Galaxy S II and sources to the CyanogenMod developers. They are learning very fast -- the home mod community made very significant improvements to the original Galaxy S, and in direct contrast to Apple (and Apple's hate-and-steal technique of 'innovation': denying feature importance and then stealing said feature from jailbreak devs), Samsung is involving those talented devs directly, at practically no cost to Samsung.
With this move they have cemented sales among several thousand android devs/enthusiasts -- a small percentage of total sales, but more importantly Samsung is gaining invaluable software improvements and beta testers at the cost of a device or two. It also means they're avoiding the bad press that many Android handset manufacturers (HTC, Motorola in particular) have gotten in the past for staying locked-down and not releasing sources.
The Hardware Advantage
There is a very important detail the article skims over:
"We’ll bring the chips, thank you. Unlike Nokia, Samsung
designs its own smartphone processors, just as Apple began
to do with the A4 chip it brought to the iPhone 3GS."
Also not mentioned is the breadth of Samsung's display advantages. Now that the screen is the most obvious selling (or dick-measuring) point for smartphones, imho their AMOLED is the one to beat. They have such a long advantage in this field [3] it is almost impossible for competitors to compete on price for display tech.
They have solid worldwide distribution and can basically sell the same handset in every market. My hope right now is this continues as long as possible! I'm already lamenting the sale of Samsung's HDD division to Seagate.
[1] http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4200451/Apple-s-A4-d...
[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2656958
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_light-emitting_diode#Sa...
"the true openness of Android"
Which part of the 'true openness' of Android killed Samsung's deal with Skyhook? Was it the part when Android boss Andy Rubin said Samsung couldn't ship if they used Skyhook?
edit: confused "stop ship" of Motorola with Samsung. Same idea for both deals though. Don't get me wrong Android much more open then iOS but it's farm from the promised land google fanboys claim it is.
"Apple-grade hardware, and keeping it affordable.."
In case you didn't notice, Apple's iPad has been somewhat competitive on price and phones too. Apple and HTC are both more profitable unitwise then Samsung, I don't know where you get off saying "no one else can compete at this level"
Your Software Advantage is "cemented sales among several thousand android devs/enthusiasts." Is that seriously their software advantage? I think Apple, Microsoft and other companies that actually sell software by the billions might take issue with Samsung having an advantage here.
Your Hardware Advantage is that they make their own chips. Which are apparently so awesome they're running NVIDIA chips in their flagship tablet.
Their screens are excellent but there is plenty of competition. Google "best smartphone display" and a bunch of iphone 4 links pop up.
No - that was great PR on behalf of Skyhook, but don't fall for it. Google had no problem with Samsung (or Motorola) shipping Skyhook. The problem was that Skyhook demanded exclusive access to the WiFi access point data (ie, if they shipped Skyhook they couldn't let Google get the same data).
Among those other issues was the provision limiting data collection to Skyhook. Motorola asked Skyhook to waive that restriction, so as to enable Motorola to comply with its obligations to Google with respect to GMS. Skyhook refused to do so, proposing instead that Motorola disable the data collection functions of GMS on its devices, which Skyhook contended would not affect performance of other functions of GMS. Motorola responded that it could not proceed in that manner without violating its obligations to Google and its carriers, and that it was therefore absolved of its obligations under the Skyhook contract. [1]
To quote Wikipedia:
In December 2010 a judge denied Skyhook's motion for preliminary injunction, saying that Google had not closed off the possibility of accepting a revised version of Skyhook's XPS service, and that Motorola had terminated their contract with Skyhook because Skyhook wanted to disable Google's location data collection functions on Motorola's devices, which would have violated Motorola's obligations to Google and its carriers. [2]
[1] http://www.socialaw.com/slip.htm?cid=20416&sid=121
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)#Lice...
You can put as many footnotes as you like, no one will take you seriously if you make claims like this.
Why?
Google has a huge problem with missing out on the location data (ie, Skyhook having an exclusive deal).
But Google very plainly doesn't have a problem with other people getting that data as well. There are numerous apps in the Android Market that do similar things, and many manufactures ship apps that dial home with location data (eg, anything that includes ads).
Because of the numerous direct quotes from internal Google emails talking about what a disaster it would be and how they quickly sabotaged the skyhook deals with their compatibility club. It's impossible even on a cursory read of what happened to takeaway that Google didn't have a problem with handset makers shipping Skyhook.
They talk about what a disaster it would be for Google to miss out on the data, not that it would be bad for Skyhook to get the data.
If you have "numerous direct quotes" then please provide them. In their absence I'd direct you to the footnotes I provided earlier.
(Also, I'd note that the quote compatibility club was from an email referring to shipping LogMeIn, not Skyhook, although Skyhook included in their case documents)
"This feels like a disaster :("
"I'll setup sometime this week so we can figure out a good battle plan"
"That would be awful for Google"
"I cannot stress how important Google’s Wi-Fi location database is to our Android and mobile product strategy"
"It's sad to see"
None support your claim that Google tried to stop Skyhook being shipped as well.
(1) Skyhook wanted it's service to ship.
(2) Samsung wanted Skyhook's service to ship.
(3) Motorola wanted Skyhook's service to ship.
According to you:
(4) Google didn't care
Observe:
(5) Skyhook's service did NOT ship.
It's pretty clear that (4) is the non sequitur. What mystical forces do you suggest stopped this from shipping if not Google?
Skyhook didn't ship because their contract with Motorola (and I assume Samsung) required exclusivity. Google cared deeply about that, and Motorola notified Skyhook that their contract was invalid because of that exclusivity clause.
Skyhook didn't ship because they no longer had a contract. If they had found a way to get a new contract then they could have shipped it. Unfortunately for Skyhook, Google managed to prove that their service gave just as good results as Skyhook, and Skyhook couldn't show any additional value so manufactures were no longer interested.
(It's worth noting that apparently the manufactures were paying for Skyhook, but didn't have to pay for Google's service.)
"I cannot stress how important Google’s Wi-Fi location database is to our Android and mobile product strategy"
See how easy a cheap argument that adds nothing to the discussion is?
If it's so obvious why don't you go ahead and explain it. I'll recap the argument so far, you tell me where I went wrong.
(1) It was claimed that Android was "truly open".
(2) I disagree and use the example of Skyhook.
(2a) I believe if Android was "truly open" Motorola and Samsung would be allowed to ship the device with another vendor's location service.
(2b) Obviously they couldn't so I conclude claims of "true openness" are overblown.
(3) At this point people start claiming absurd things like "Google doesn't care if Skyhook shipped"
(3a) When imho they obviously did because there's no other explanation for why skyhook's location service didn't ship.
Google wanted in on the data, was willing to share with Skyhook.
Skyhook wanted exclusive access to the data, which Google wasn't willing to sacrifice so they muscled them out.
How can we make this more obvious to you? (Oh wait, a glance at your comment history explains why you don't seem to get what anyone here is saying. You have an obvious bias and it's apparently affecting your ability to comprehend or something).
Motorola can ship whatever they want. Do you really not understand how MIT/GPL work? Just because Android's open doesn't mean that Google has to sell/give their GoogleApps to anyone that wants or demands them. Google's mobile applications are completely isolated from the openness of Android. Sure, this works nicely for Google, seeing as very few vendors have had the balls to ship Android devices without Google's Market, but that's just a missed opportunity by potential competitors if you ask me.
Sounds "open" to me.
"a glance at your comment history ... an obvious bias and it's apparently affecting your ability to comprehend or something)."
I could say the same for yours. Let's be clear since I'm being accused of being some sort of one dimensional Android hater:
I like Google. I like Android. I like the openness of Android. I also and sometimes especially like several of the non-Open parts of Android (Maps and Gmail are the gold standard in mobile, Marketplace needs work but they iterate fast, Music and Movies look great and have probably sold me on an Android tablet if/when I get one). I have no problem with Google's location services, as far as I know they are the best in the world. I have no problem with them muscling out Skyhook, that's how business works. I have no problem with Google using compatibility as a club, and as in the case of timely updates they need a bigger club (they know this and are iterating quickly as usual).
Here's the difference: what I have a problem with is claiming that all of Android is this free and open promised land while you're muscling people out at the same time. That's just willful ignorance of what Google and Android (in its totality) are.
You can claim that "Android in it's entirety" is just the open source pieces but at that point we're just talking past each other and should agree to disagree. Is Honeycomb not Android? Would not every review point out that you don't get "the full Android" from a device lacking Google's suite of non-Open Source apps from a device shipping without "Android compatibility"? Since you continually question my reading comprehension use your superior skills and tell me what this quote from Android's wikipedia means: "device manufacturers can not use Google's Android trademark unless Google certifies that the device complies with their Compatibility Definition Document (CDD)"
Mozilla owns the Firefox trademark and controls who can use it. Google does that with Android. Surely you're not suggesting that anyone should be able to use trademarked names of other products just because their source is GPL/MIT licensed...
As for everything else, it's just you talking past me or over me: I'll repeat it, Android and Google Apps are two completely different products. Your attempts to use Google Apps to discredit Android's openness is dishonest, disingenuous and just weak. Android is free and open and Google muscled them out of Skyhook by threatening to withold Google Apps. Android is free and open; still, completely regardless of that statement. Gmail is not part of Android. Calendar is not part of Android. They're irrelevant at this point in this discussion. Dude, I even granted that the Market missing would be detrimental to the sale of any Android device, but that's STILL completely ancillary to Android's openness.
Android is all MIT and GPL. RedHat does development behind closed doors. So does Canonical. Hey, guess what Novell does? Does that make their core Linux product any less "open"? Certainly not by any technical standard. Does Canonical operating a paid channel in the Ubuntu Software Center mean Ubuntu is no longer open?
Heh, as for my comments, the first two pages don't even touch Android, there's a complaint about WebGL in iOS, but Android doesn't even have WebGL at this point, so it's not like it was fan-based by any means. I like Android but think Google is screwing themselves in about 5 different ways and I think we'll look back at WebOS as damn near visionary. I won't lie and say that I like iOS, because I don't, I can't stand the user experience, but the quality of the app store and the graphics are smoother than I've seen in any pre-mid-2010 Android phone. I'm a big fan of competition, but I'm also a huge fan of OSS and I just don't understand the need for people to try to cut down Android and make it seem like Google's little prized possession (not to say that it isn't, by any means), but if that's bad... what does it mean for Apple/iOS?
My first hardware advantage was that they make Apple's chips, learn from Apple, and they save by letting Apple take much of the R&D cost. Apple is concerned about this and will likely be taking their chip production elsewhere. [1]
Let's be realistic: Apple hardware is always more expensive. I'm not talking single-unit profit, Apple is well-known for their high markups. I'm talking overall market dominance. The Galaxy S II is already outselling the iPhone 4 in the UK. [2] The preorders in Korea for the Galaxy S II are much higher than the iPhone 4 release. [3] The first Galaxy S is outselling the iPhone 4 in Japan! [4]
Software sales are not the software advantage, involving quality devs from the community is the advantage. Samsung doesn't need to spend as much on marketing and software dev because the community is already helping them. Just look at the ridiculous amount of free press that one move has given them, and the CM port isn't even to beta yet! [5]
My second hardware advantage is absolutely their AMOLED tech. They are by far the leaders in OLED, Sony is the only other major player and they are looking at combining with Toshiba's LCD division in order to keep up. [6] If you are a consumer who prefers an OLED smartphone (as I do), the Galaxy S is the only choice. Again, Samsung manufacturers their own screens, simplifying the process. Googling 'best smartphone display' does not reflect any advantage besides Apple's giant marketing machine.
If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd love to read it! But I think Samsung is the clear winner.
[1] http://www.macstories.net/news/apple-to-outsource-a4-and-a5-...
[2] http://www.mynextfone.co.uk/news/article/samsung-galaxy-s-ii...
[3] http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/03/galaxy-s-ii-beats-iphone-4...
[4] http://www.redmondpie.com/samsung-galaxy-s-outsells-iphone-4...
[5] http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...
[6] http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/06/08/sony-and-toshiba-to-mer...
So let me get this straight. Samsung designs the S5, essentially assuming the bulk of the risk bringing the design to market, both for themselves and their clients (Apple). Apple licenses the design and then finds out that Samsung has been using these clever guys at Intrinsity to juice the Cortex-A8 in the design. Apple buys Intrinsity lock-stock-and-barrel, denying Samsung said cleverness for upcoming Cortex-A9 designs. And of course it's quite likely at this point that they'll be losing their biggest external customer for future SoCs (Apple).
And this is something other than a disaster for Samsung? Honestly, they've been completely outmaneuvered.
Some sources say that Apple paid for the initial design of the A4 and Samsung also became interested, splitting the cost. [1]
They are still getting paid by Apple to manufacture Intrinsity's chips, and Apple is clearly worried that Samsung has been learning from that. [2]
Apple's acquisition of Intrinsity was expensive, and the rumor is that they will keep the design to themselves, not making any money off of licensing. [1]
Samsung's choice of chips for the Galaxy S II blow away the competition with performance, losing the Intrinsity design is clearly not a problem. [3]
Again, Apple is taking the expensive route with anti-competitive practices, whereas Samsung is learning from others and using its flexibility to overcome obstacles at lower cost.
[1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/3665/apples-intrinsity-acquisi...
[2] http://www.macstories.net/news/apple-to-outsource-a4-and-a5-...
[3] http://pocketnow.com/android/samsung-galaxy-s-ii-scores-an-i...
Sorry - I'm kind of chuckling to myself at how hard you're trying to think of this as a good thing for Samsung. Either Apple keeps the technology to themselves or they license it to others and risk others learning from it. This much you seem to understand - but you don't seem to acknowledge that these are the only two choices! Let's put it another way - either Samsung has to pay Apple lots of money to make a SoC to match the iPhone 5's performance, or they lag behind in the benchmarks race.
Samsung's choice of chips for the Galaxy S II blow away the competition with performance, losing the Intrinsity design is clearly not a problem. [3]
Jesus man - you sound like the Iraqi minister of information.
It wasn't Samsung that made the Hummingbird what it was - it was Intrinsity. It was Intrinsity's design innovation that set Samsung and Apple so far above their Cortex-A8 contemporaries. And now they don't have that. The S II has a fast chip in it. Faster than what Apple will have soon? No one knows, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Again, Apple is taking the expensive route with anti-competitive practices, whereas Samsung is learning from others and using its flexibility to overcome obstacles at lower cost.
The unfortunate truth is that all of the lawsuits that are being thrown around in mobile right now are dirt-cheap compared to the cost of building a new SoC. They're also dirt-cheap compared to income on those chips and handsets that the big players enjoy.
I've yet to really find anything I can't do with the handset. It's a light, fast, open, beautiful piece of hardware. I'm already seeing a lot of other people converting over after they see the difference that openness can bring. Want to play a random video file? Just drop it onto the phone and hit play.
Thankfully, my Galaxy S is still doing everything I want, so it's not -too- tempting.
I'll probably change it anyway in a year or two, so why bother paying more for the newer version. I also have an iPhone 3GS, and as long as the battery doesn't die on me and as long the latest iOS works, I won't upgrade.
So I'm happy to forego the incremental one-ups from the Android world and know that I have the best device, and that if I want to get the new one next year, that'll be the newest and shiniest for a whole year too.*
If you're happy living in an iWorld, you get a clear step function where you know what step you're standing on and about when the next step will come. This doesn't result in slower progress (in my opinion), it's just a different shape than the more smooth sloped progression in the Android world.
* And sometimes, as with the iPad/iPad 2, I'm happy with what I have and don't feel compelled to have the latest and greatest.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004NF3Z82/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...
This one has 13.3" LED display, 128GB SSD, sandy-bridge dual core 1.4 GHz i5, 4GB ram, WiMax 4G support, and a USB 3.0 port.
It is 2.88 lbs and .62 inches thick.
The MacBook Air 13" model has a 1.86Ghz processor, but a Core 2 Duo, and with 4GB ram and a 128GB SSD, it is $1399.
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macboo...
It weighs more at 2.9lbs and is .68 inches thick at the hinge area. The front is only .11 inches thick.
Minus the ability to develop for iOS, the $200 difference seems pretty fair.
There has also been a lot of talk about how the broadcom wireless has bad performance, both in linux and windows. It is a half-size mini pcie card, and I have yet to find a good one to replace it.
If it interests anyone, it is located on the button, near the right flip-out port.
About a week after getting it I noticed a dead red subpixel, luckily samsung have a 14 day zero dead pixel warranty, so I was able to get it replaced from the store I bought it from. I haven't had many crashes since then, but I also updated the kernel to 39 around the same time, so I'm not too sure what caused it to get better (I used the same linux installation from my old laptop).
The touch pad is a pleasure to use, unlike the ones on previous laptops I've used. Battery life would be 3-5 hours depending on load. The keyboard backlight seems to stay on when the lid is closed, I haven't looked into ways to control it on linux yet. The mini-hdmi plug will be a bit annoying, especially because the one adapter I bought doesn't fit (need to get out the metal file, make the adapter slimer). I'm also not sure where I'd get another ethernet adapter (seems to be a custom job).
But that seems to be an issue with whatever cobbled together version of Android 3.0 that was on the pre-release devices. The difference under 3.1 is like night and day in terms of stability. I find the device extremely usable now and I enjoy it more than I do my iPad.
Since I followed the workaround described here [0], I'm not getting any more Xorg crashes. However, I suffered from very high graphics-related latencies, which required another workaround described in [1].
The only, but very nasty, issue left are very random complete system freezes. The power button continues to work, but I have no idea where they come from.
Right now, I'm running 2.8.38 again. I tried some .39 releases, but had various issues with them. The 3.0 release candidates did either reboot immediately due to some known UEFI bug or the touch pad and keyboard did not work.
[0]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-input...
[1]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/761065
I never had anything like that in the links you gave. I had X freezes, where I could usually hit the power button once, and the computer would shutdown normally. If magic sysrq keys worked correctly, I could just use raw mode (the reboot magic combination never seemed to work). I also had many kernel oops from Divide Error, which would cause ksoftirqd to go 100% cpu until the computer froze a few minutes later. So if things seem laggy, I have a habit of checking to see if this is occurring, then I can restart normally before the crash.
All of these crashes haven't happened recently, however. The strangest thing I am seeing at the moment is Battery acpi signals, when there is no reason for why they should be triggered.
I also just ordered an atheros ar9382 to replace the wireless card. I may lose bluetooth, but I don't even have the relevant programs installed at the moment. I would say the wireless was okay while I had signal, but would go horrible when it got a little distance away.
I had a few strange kernel oopses with 2.6.39 kernels, that seemed to be SATA related. That's why I downgraded back to 2.6.38.
Could you let me know whether your wireless replacement worked or not? Right now the bad wireless connectivity is the biggest issue I'm having.
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/opensource/auto-reboot-linu...
Edit: And I forgot the screen resolution which is better on the MBA (1440x900 against 1366x768, the same as seen on MBA 11").
All joking aside, I have one of these laptops and they're just great:)
They also bought liquavista and have very good OLED screens for the future 5 years.
Given that Nokia is years away from launching a phone and they have to start over from scratch, it is going to be hard from them to get market share.
Aren't they releasing a new Windows Phone this year?
Too bad it's competing against the iPad 2, which destroys it in btty, benchmarks, media and app ecosystem.
"Costs sub-$300"
With a 1 year contract at $39 a month. $729 off contract.
There are so many metrics to measure with concerning product standing (you've got raw volume measurement, usability, trend factor, and on and on). To me both Apple and Samsung have probably honed in on the few metrics that matter (to consumers) which surprise, give both companies a better bottom line! Oh yeah, and consumers benefit too by having good gear that works.
My question is when will it become the data plans which start to limit this 'hand-held device revolution' and when will we do something about it?
MS may be late to the consumer party, but they could still take the board room - or if the execs won't give up their iPhones, the rest of the company.
I always thought it would be a good move for Oracle to buy RIM. They could then offer an end to end solution for businesses, from hardware (sun), OS (solaris), database (oracle), language (java), all the middle ware software through to the phone. I could see a lot of big companies jumping on that platform in a heartbeat.
Apple has never known how to provide for the enterprise effectively. Hell, it was several months before iPhones could be locked, for crying out loud, which is one of the big reasons adoption was extremely slow in the enterprise...at least at the companies I know who allowed employees to choose their own phone, but disallowed iPhone (Google among them). And, Google and the Android makers haven't really tried to tackle the enterprise market in any notable way, though the openness of the platform allows bigger businesses to do what they need to do, regardless of vendor support...which is pretty powerful, too.
If IT guys are choosing, I'd be surprised if they don't choose Open Source stuff more often than something from MS. But, I have biases from my own days as an IT guy.
To be honest if I was in that situation, I would want an end to end solution too. Im not aware of any end to end corporate solution for android phones out there actually. Perhaps that's a business opportunity for someone with enough capitol to start it.
Its really in competition with Symbian.
The biggest issue with it though is that the SDK is C++ only which is going lock out a lot of developers.
And no I'm not saying it will grow like Android did from Q4 09 to Q4 10 but they'll be probably be pushing RIM for 3rd place this time next year.
This is what makes smartphone exciting, the race to advance technology for high stakes.
Sure, the same way that an iPhone app developer designs his own iPhones.