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Google should ditch Samsung
- Thread starter miketheapplegui
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In Samsung's defense...
I often compared Samsung to the SEGA of the 1990's. SEGA is now owned by Sammy, the Japanese pachinko company. Now there are differences too like Samsung is better at hardware while SEGA was more successful with software. But they share two things in common. Clever marketing and both took alot of risks even if it comes out half-baked.
My dislikes of Samsung stems from the usual haterade brigade's often displeasures -
- Software design and optimization
- Hardware design language and build quality
- Gimmicky half-baked features
- Chinese brands are surpassing the South Korean brands in value similar to the South Koreans surpassing the Japanese in the prior decade. Japan -> South Korea -> China?
- Too many phones and not enough differentiation although Sony and HTC are also guilty of this and are struggling more.
- Needs a charismatic spokesman or figure INSIDE the company for people to identify with. If not, create a mascot. Apple have Jony Ive, Google have Matias Duarte, Xiaomi have Lei Jun, Hugo Barra, and Mitu bunnies. Celebrity endorsers aside, I can't remember a single person who works at Samsung. When SEGA was in its prime, I can remember Tom Kalinske, Bernie Stolar, Yu Suzuki, Yuji Naka and of course Sonic and several faces from other franchises. Consumers want to remember faces and not seeing an image of a factory stamping Samsung acrosss their products.
My likes -
- Clever marketing. Even when they are not dissing Apple fans which can be quite hilarious, Samsung have many celebrity endorsers to plug their product like selfie group shot in the Oscars or sponsoring the NBA and Summer Olympics.
- Being the most popular phone OEM often has its perks like faster resell similar to Nokia was when they were #1. Aside from the Galaxy Note series, Samsung doesn't have as high resell value as Apple. But when you do sell a Samsung, you would have alot of interested buyers. Nobody gives a damn about LG, HTC, Motorola, and many others. Their resell value drops faster than break-even devices from Xiaomi and OnePlus because rarely anybody wants their phones and they overprice them in the first place relying on the old business model of paying for marketing, overhead, and employees.
- Display technology. I don't care if some find Samsung displays in both TV's and smartphones oversaturated and a bit cartoony, many people want to see the colors pop. If they want more accurate colors, there is real life.
- Only major OEM that can still offer removable battery & expandable memory for their flagships (Galaxy S & Note series).
- Low SAR although it has risen steadily in their more recent flagships.
- Good cameras
- Innovative risk taking. This is where I admire Samsung the most while others usually play it safe. What other company could bring back the stylus? Or revolutionize the phablet movement? Or bring back flip phones like the Galaxy Golden? Or add Android into dedicated cameras like the Galaxy Camera and K? Or come out with something unique and bizarre like the Galaxy Note Edge? When foldable screens get released to revolutionize tablets/phablets, are we waiting for Apple to do this? No, we are waiting on Samsung and maybe LG or Sharp.
I finally saw both the Note 4 and Alpha a week ago and actually came away impressed with the design esp the latter. Alpha looks better in person. Samsung has alot of potential to rise from my 10th fav to my top 5 if they can streamline and revamp TouchWiz and keep improving on both hardware and software designs. Will I ever love Samsung as much as Google or Sony? Maybe not. So while they aren't great at everything they do, Samsung can still be a great company that can make great products and aren't totally useless to the industry. You could choose alot worse than Samsung.
I often compared Samsung to the SEGA of the 1990's. SEGA is now owned by Sammy, the Japanese pachinko company. Now there are differences too like Samsung is better at hardware while SEGA was more successful with software. But they share two things in common. Clever marketing and both took alot of risks even if it comes out half-baked.
My dislikes of Samsung stems from the usual haterade brigade's often displeasures -
- Software design and optimization
- Hardware design language and build quality
- Gimmicky half-baked features
- Chinese brands are surpassing the South Korean brands in value similar to the South Koreans surpassing the Japanese in the prior decade. Japan -> South Korea -> China?
- Too many phones and not enough differentiation although Sony and HTC are also guilty of this and are struggling more.
- Needs a charismatic spokesman or figure INSIDE the company for people to identify with. If not, create a mascot. Apple have Jony Ive, Google have Matias Duarte, Xiaomi have Lei Jun, Hugo Barra, and Mitu bunnies. Celebrity endorsers aside, I can't remember a single person who works at Samsung. When SEGA was in its prime, I can remember Tom Kalinske, Bernie Stolar, Yu Suzuki, Yuji Naka and of course Sonic and several faces from other franchises. Consumers want to remember faces and not seeing an image of a factory stamping Samsung acrosss their products.
My likes -
- Clever marketing. Even when they are not dissing Apple fans which can be quite hilarious, Samsung have many celebrity endorsers to plug their product like selfie group shot in the Oscars or sponsoring the NBA and Summer Olympics.
- Being the most popular phone OEM often has its perks like faster resell similar to Nokia was when they were #1. Aside from the Galaxy Note series, Samsung doesn't have as high resell value as Apple. But when you do sell a Samsung, you would have alot of interested buyers. Nobody gives a damn about LG, HTC, Motorola, and many others. Their resell value drops faster than break-even devices from Xiaomi and OnePlus because rarely anybody wants their phones and they overprice them in the first place relying on the old business model of paying for marketing, overhead, and employees.
- Display technology. I don't care if some find Samsung displays in both TV's and smartphones oversaturated and a bit cartoony, many people want to see the colors pop. If they want more accurate colors, there is real life.
- Only major OEM that can still offer removable battery & expandable memory for their flagships (Galaxy S & Note series).
- Low SAR although it has risen steadily in their more recent flagships.
- Good cameras
- Innovative risk taking. This is where I admire Samsung the most while others usually play it safe. What other company could bring back the stylus? Or revolutionize the phablet movement? Or bring back flip phones like the Galaxy Golden? Or add Android into dedicated cameras like the Galaxy Camera and K? Or come out with something unique and bizarre like the Galaxy Note Edge? When foldable screens get released to revolutionize tablets/phablets, are we waiting for Apple to do this? No, we are waiting on Samsung and maybe LG or Sharp.
I finally saw both the Note 4 and Alpha a week ago and actually came away impressed with the design esp the latter. Alpha looks better in person. Samsung has alot of potential to rise from my 10th fav to my top 5 if they can streamline and revamp TouchWiz and keep improving on both hardware and software designs. Will I ever love Samsung as much as Google or Sony? Maybe not. So while they aren't great at everything they do, Samsung can still be a great company that can make great products and aren't totally useless to the industry. You could choose alot worse than Samsung.
It's more so that everywhere I go on the Internet or tv I see Samsung ads. Maybe if they spent more money on developing s good product rather than shoving ads down my throat, I wouldn't feel much hatred towards them.
At least a few times per day I see ads on Twitter from them.
Kind of silly thread since he can buy one of the many other options like Nexus, LG, Sony, HTC, OnePlus One, Xiaomi, etc. but maybe that why he's banned. Samsung also drove the market with higher DRAM so 2GB and 3GB are becoming more common now, multiwindows multitasking which others are borrowing, Eye Stay to keep screen from turning off while reading but no one has the precision pen.
Why would google ditch samsung when they represent about 70 % of android device sales?
I understand that some people do not like Touch Wiz or samsung device build quality but google ditching samsung doesn't make sense financially.
I understand that some people do not like Touch Wiz or samsung device build quality but google ditching samsung doesn't make sense financially.
Which means Google Android is becoming more like Apple's much-criticized walled garden approach. Isn't that what many Android fanboys hated about Apple all these years? The hypocrisy is so thick.
not at all.......Google is setting limits but no where near the walled garden the Apple fanboys enjoy.
Totally agree. I've often thought the same thing.
Sure it would. Android has had pen support since Ice Cream Sandwich, including hover, distance, angle, pressure, side buttons and which end is being used (pen or eraser).
The question is, how much of the 70% buys primarily for Android versus buying primarily for Samsung.
If Samsung were to move to, say Tizen, would the entire 70% go with them? Or would people stick with Android and go with a different OEM?
I think it would be extremely interesting to see. My desire to see Samsung split from Google has nothing to do with hate (though I don't like Samsung). I'm just curious to see what the marketshare would look like.
That's a great point. Personally I buy Samsung because they are the only ones with a stylus/digitizer. Although I love my Note 4 I have no loyalty to them and wouldn't hesitate to consider another phone which had a digitizer/stylus. If that were compounded by Samsung forcing me to use Tizen, well that would be a tough decision but ultimately I'd probably say goodbye to Samsung because the vast majority of the utility I find in my stylus is with MS OneNote. Unless MS made a Tizen version of OneNote, which I HIGHLY doubt.
Samsung is just stuck in the middle, but thinning itself out at both ends. Apple is eating up the high end, all the Chinese oem's are eating up the low end. Samsung doesn't know which direction to go in so it dabbles in both with no full commitment, and it's products end up staying right smack in the middle but with a high end price tag. The Note 4 and the alpha are where it's starting to say enough with this, we can do high end also, but it may be too little to late.
This should probably boost Samsung's sales next year. I'm sure people are ready for a whole new look.
http://www.sammobile.com/2014/11/03/exclusive-samsungs-next-big-thing-is-codenamed-project-zero/
http://www.sammobile.com/2014/11/03/exclusive-samsungs-next-big-thing-is-codenamed-project-zero/
This doesn't surprise me in the slightest....the GS5 was, by all accounts, a huge letdown sales-wise. Samsung had big hopes for it, and it barely outsold the iPhone 5C in some cases - never beat out the 8 month older 5S.
They boasted at the start of the year that they expect/ predicted 100 million sales themselves and haven't anything remotely close to that by all counts....
The problem is most smartphones are getting to stage where if you don't break them they are most definitely powerful enough to last two or three years before a new smartphone is feeling tired. Most people are not like us here and upgrading multiple times. Most people upgrade every two-three years.
All manufactures are going to reach a point where a new 'flagship' in an existing territory is going to be hampered sales wise because of the lack of necessity or desire for users to upgrade to these incremental updates. Therefore your potential sales market in these territories is actually dwindling as phones get more powerful and they last longer.
The big market going forward is good mid range hardware at cheaper competitive pricing in countries like India and China. This is where Samsung is feeling the most burn at the moment as they lose market share to native manufactures like Xaomi etc...
Those are advertisments? LOL. Just looks like a link to buy them from a carriers website.
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I dont get the Samsung hate. If you dont like it, dont buy it but they make nice products. Ive had a couple of their phones but havent bought the S4 or S5. Not a fan of the bloatware but love the SD Microcard so i could live with the bloatware with a Micro slot so i can expand it how much i want for a minimul price.
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