Samsung Galaxy S3: What happens to Android when HTC can’t get a look in?
The Samsung Galaxy S3 has been launched nowadays, and from what we’ve seen so far, Samsung’s turned out another showstopper. It is massive, it is lovely, it is stupendously rapidly. To call it an iPhone killer would be facetious: exactly where there’s space for a single, there’s space for two, and right now Apple’s as well busy creating a killing to care about possessing something resembling a close rival.
But it does present a problem for the Android eco-method as a entire. See this graph? This chart, published by the analysts at Asymco today, depicts the percentages of profit in the smartphone industry because the launch of the original iPhone back in 2007. And as you can see, appropriate now, Apple and Samsung are cleaning property.
But here’s a worrying thought. What happens when no other Android manufacturers can even get a look in?
- Samsung Galaxy S3 Official!
As the graph – pooled from years of firm quarterly filings from eight manufacturers – shows, Apple has come to dominate, creating a wealthy profit off its wildly well-known iPhones (73 percent of the total at the end of 2011). Samsung’s carrying out fairly great too (26 percent), taking into consideration it also sells an massive number of low value function phones which can not make as significantly funds per handset.
Everyone else though? They’re screwed. When the poster boy of Android, HTC has had a tepid handful of quarters, although Sony and LG haven’t turned much of a profit in years. That little green sliver above Nokia by the way? Yeah, that is Motorola.
As shocking as the figures and proportions are, it would be difficult to argue that they’re not deserved. The iPhone is the iPhone, and we’ve crowned the last two Galaxy S phones as the finest Android phone ever on release. As I stated earlier this week, clients genuinely are not stupid, and have given both a ringing endorsement with their wallets.
Which is fine, for Apple. Less so for Samsung: what takes place to Android when no one else can scratch a living from it?
You see, Android is a very different company model to iOS. It’s produced by Google, and distributed for cost-free for producers to do as they select with – inside reason. The goal for Google is to get absolutely everyone tied into its suite of solutions, and ultimately, get eyeballs on ads. And it’s operating: every main study firm pegs Android as the leader in global smartphone market place share by a extremely extended way. Much more than 1 in four phones sold in the UK right now is an Android device.
But how extended can that final, when organizations can’t make a profit? The matter’s not helped by the encroaching Chinese rivals such as ZTE and Huawei who seem to be able to pay their employees in vapour.
And here comes the difficulty: what takes place when phones like the Samsung Galaxy S3 muscle out even premium rivals such as the stunning HTC One X from shop shelves? HTC’s new line of phones deserve to do well, but you can only acquire 1 phone (at least, if you are sensible) each two years or so, and it is difficult to argue with the spectacular screen and speed of the Samsung Galaxy S3.
Does Google want to spend all its time investing in an OS increasingly synonymous with Samsung and a couple of low cost imitators? We’ve seen the decline of many smartphone operating systems in current years (Palm OS, webOS, Symbian, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry OS), and although it is hard to see Android falling from grace proper now, if something could bring about its downfall, I’d say it’d be this.
Now, some have suggested that it’s currently time for Samsung to strike out on its own. Fork Android, Kindle Fire style, and do what it likes with it. It’s got the clout to pull it off and make the networks bow down to its whims.
To which I say, very good luck with that. It’s a crude generalisation, but the cause Apple was in a position to bridge the gap in between Western mobile phones and advanced Asian ones was due to the fact all the Japanese and South Korean phones had dire user interfaces. Don’t forget? They nevertheless do: look at the mess LG, a business with all the exact same in-residence verticals as Samsung (screen tech, for instance) , is in correct now when it comes to mobile.
Samsung’s already tried its own hand at an OS with Bada, and it’s proved a spectacular flop. Samsung can not carry on making these fat profits with out Google’s new design sensibilities and talented engineers.
So we reach an impasse. The Samsung Galaxy S3 might extremely well be too good for Google’s personal good. When the time comes for the covers to come off the Samsung Galaxy S4 subsequent year, will Google nonetheless have the impetus it does now?
I hope so, but I do not know so.
Let us know what you feel in the comments beneath.