Samsung has fanboys ?
Samsung is a very impressive company. It doesn't use the Nike-esque marketing playbook Apple does, and as such, it doesn't inspire the hero worship or the fanaticism in the States. But it's been quietly building up a massive empire.
[Full disclosure: I say this as an Apple fanboy, and as the resident iOS 7 apologist at my office (everyone here's firmly on Team Android). I own plenty of Apple and Samsung devices, and I don't feel the need to declare absolute brand loyalty to any one provider.]
"It always amuses me to see how much vitriol comes from anti-apple folks..."
Was I the intended recipient of that description? I'd hardly call myself "anti-Apple," nor would I say I've engaged in "vitriol" directed at Apple. Almost the complete opposite, in fact. :)
Apologies if I'm misreading you.
You did a great job, summed up my thoughts. If I wasn't an Apple kind of guy, I'm sure I'd have an S4.
Apple thrives on publicity and hype, its part of their image and its polarising.
Nike's playbook -- as made famous by Phil Knight in the 70s, 80s, and 90s -- was to market a lifestyle, not a shoe. Nike is an incredibly innovative marketing company, and Steve Jobs himself fondly referenced Phil Knight's work at Nike as inspiration for how he thought about marketing at Apple.
They are the Goldman Sachs of the electronics industry. The Korean government and the Korean people will never let Samsung fail. Having such a sturdy safety net means they can take some very bold risks and those have really paid off for them.
Building a fab and developing semi technologies requires a huge amount of capital, but if a competitor comes up with a better process you lose your lunch. That doesn't mean that in the next generation you won't be out ahead though.
Intel seem to do pretty well without a government to bail them out, but the other players are all deeply intertwined with their governments.
Maybe high tech manufacturing is an industry where it is hard for free market countries to compete, hence its flight from the west. Actually, a lot of technological success on the US is built on the back of its military industrial complex.
Is deep government involvement required for technological development? (Specifically the needs R&D and money, not the many small bets found here). If so, wouldn't it be nice if our engine for funding that wasn't built around war.
Whether government investment or assistance is necessary for deep technological R&D is a really interesting question. A preponderance of our hardware (and many of our software) advances, even in the private sector, were built on the back of major government R&D investment. As you've pointed out, a lot of this has come from the military-industrial complex.
Our major companies (other than Goldman Sachs and its peers) don't receive the same level of protection that the Korean chaebol, or the Japanese Big Four, or the Chinese or even French conglomerates do. But that may change in the near to distant future. It will depend upon our domestic firms' abilities to compete on an international playing field that is increasingly turning toward the chaebol model, and not so much the free-market model.
It's TLC, so a bit slower and it won't last as long, but for almost 30% cheaper it's good value.