Samsung is combining the true openness of Android with Apple-grade hardware, and keeping it affordable. No one else can compete currently at this level.<p><i>The Software Advantage:</i><p>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.<p>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.<p><i>The Hardware Advantage</i><p>There is a very important detail the article skims over:<p><pre><code> "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."
</code></pre>
Samsung manufactures that A4 iPhone core chip and the Galaxy's Cortex-A8 is its brother. If anything, the A4 is a <i>stripped-down</i> version of Samsung's S5 [1]. Samsung again gets to learn and implement tech improvements (this time from Apple) at little or no cost. The Galaxy Tab shares tech with the iPad, and the Series 9 (Macbook Air competitor) mentioned in another comment here [2] is the next example.<p>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.<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4200451/Apple-s-A4-dissected-discussed--and-tantalizing?pageNumber=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4200451/Apple-s-A4-d...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2656958" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2656958</a><p>[3] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_light-emitting_diode#Samsung_applications" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_light-emitting_diode#Sa...</a>
I must say, i'm fully converted from the iPhone club to my Galaxy S2. I can't imagine at the moment what else I could possibly want from a handset, other than slightly better battery life.<p>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.
Samsung has been learning a lot from Apple, not only on their smartphones but also on their laptops (with the release of the Macbook Air sort of clone, Samsung Series 9) and on their tablets (even though they have different sizes, they are all under the same name, Galaxy Tab). They are now focusing on having less choices but better ones. I really like this new approach.
Here's my Samsung story, some of the details might not be 100% accurate, on account of how long ago it happened. One summer, I was working at a computer repair shop as a technician. I was in college, so this was about 1995. A customer brought a Samsung laptop in, and it was suffering symptoms of bad CMOS battery (RTC was resetting or somesuch). Anyway, I was having trouble trying to figure out how to locate the battery to order a replacement. As a last resort I decided to call the support hot-line printed on the bottom of the laptop. I was dreading this step, because I had become very accustomed to having to wait upwards of an hour whenever I called a tech support number. I was absolutely blown away when the phone range like twice, and a guy answered the phone (i.e. no 10 level deep phone tree; no please-press-1-for-sales...). Anyway, I start to tell my story, hoping that this receptionist will point me to someone who knows something, instead of just shunting me off onto hold, waiting for me to give up and hang up. We'll lo and behold, this wasn't a receptionist, it was a technician, who appeared to know something. I gave him the model number of the laptop, and he knew what to do, without even having to look anything up in the computer. He directed me to the place where I had to stick a paper clip to pop off the keyboard, and I was done within 60 seconds, They were shipping me a replacement battery next day. That has been the best example of customer service that I have ever experienced. I remember it 16 years later, and I have been a happy Samsung owner with many different appliances since. And I've never had to call tech-support for any of the hardware I've owned over the years.
I work for a telco, and have never seen interest in a prerealease phone like that for the Galaxy S 2, other than for the iPhone obviously. They made an excellent name with the original Galaxy S, and are following it up strongly.
Yesterday my mother wanted to buy a LED TV, so I looked for the reviews at the consumers organization magazine and found the best ones in all categories to be Samsung.<p>They also bought liquavista and have very good OLED screens for the future 5 years.<p>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.
My Galaxy Tab replaced my laptop at home. It's a ten inch ipad killer, open as your mother's arms, and makes phone calls. It's both wifi AND 3G. Costs sub-$300 in Australia. Fits snuggly in my jacket pocket and plays flash (when i absolutely need it)
Well, competition is always very good.<p>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.<p>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?
So, Samsung "Bada" devices have outsold Windows Phone 7 devices. I'd never even <i>heard of</i> Bada before reading this article. Windows Phone 7 is even worse off than I'd realized (and I already thought it was a market failure).
I wouldn't dismiss them as copycats since Samsung has good technology. They're also closer to the manufacturing side than Apple. However, they're also spread across all kinds of products. They'll eventually fall into the same trap as Japan. Korean demographics is in a good place right now too, right before low fertility rears its ugly head. They are trying to avoid Japanese mistakes but it's hard to outclass your inspiration or really invent something revolutionary.<p>This is what makes smartphone exciting, the race to advance technology for high stakes.
Samsung also makes cars: <a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2011/06/14/renault-samsung-previews-new-sm7-w-video/" rel="nofollow">http://www.autoblog.com/2011/06/14/renault-samsung-previews-...</a>
I got turned off Samsung a few years ago because of one of their low-end phones: felt cheap, was slow, and the UI sucked. The GS2 has me rethinking that in ways I didn't think it could.
I want to know more about the "smartphone" market in 1996. If I recall correctly, the smartest thing a phone had in 1996 was a contact list. Perhaps they mean mobile telephones?
What's the development experience like on the Samsung phones? I've been doing iOS since 2008 but have been considering getting into Android for a few months. The only thing that deters me is the few rants I've come across saying how much better the iOS development experience is.