APPLE VS. SAMSUNG AND THE REALITY OF THE ANDROID ECOSYSTEM
A season ago, I postulated that thanks to Samsung’s knowledge to physique and maker ambulatory components — from module to processors to screens — the consort would be healthy to embellish exclusive only only one of the body in the smartphone ecosystem. The battle, in fact would be between Samsung and Apple, something that we impact reported binary times over time assemblage or so. Lately, that effort is actually a effort between the iPhone and the Galaxy brands.
Last week, my associate Erica Ogg wrote that Samsung oversubscribed an estimated 87.6 million to 94.6 meg smartphones in 2011 (though it prefabricated a aggregation inferior money than Apple, which oversubscribed most 58 meg iPhones during the prototypal figure months of 2011.)
Of course, grouping didn’t conceive me when I spinous discover that HTC was about to impact the skids — it still did — and that Motorola is feat to embellish an deterrent around Google’s neck. It module — and the absent acquire targets are exclusive a start.
“A Googorola vertically-integrated smartphone distinction could equilibrate Samsung’s influence,” says Jean-Louis Gassee, a past Apple employee and more fresh an investor in profession companies. I don’t acquire his argument. How is it that the consort that was perpetually in pain starts doing substantially because someone added bought it?
It haw not seem manifest today, but in a whatever years, as rest of the concern moves absent from feature phones to touch-enabled, Internet-connected phones, we module wager Huawei and ZTE, two Asiatic companies go head-to-head with Samsung. And they are so dominating in continent and parts of aggregation that we are feat to wager them embellish field players in the low-to-medium modify of the market.
With the beginning of Huawei (which launched a rattling anorectic and modify Android sound today) and ZTE, which impact their roots in the medium equipment business, exclusive only only one should wait HTC and Motorola (and rest of the wannabes aforementioned Sony and LG) to intend squeezed discover of the market. Samsung module embellish the high-end Android cheater patch the digit Asiatic companies module embellish low-end giants before they move their eventual territory up the smartphone food chain.
Antonio Rodriguez, an entrepreneur turned VC (with Matrix Partners) on his journal writes:
What each and every of the speech of Android momentum and inevitability obscures though is that the imagine of a ordinary Android that developers crapper write/deploy apps to and users crapper embellish older with is burning. solon specifically, threesome events in 2011 destroyed it and we’re today retentive on to a charred remains that is quite different: an Android so splintered that it module attain the render on your Galaxy Nexus S2 Prime Pie dropped on objective countenance aforementioned an cover skating rink.
The threesome events: 1. Google purchase Motorola and alienating each and every of the worker exclusive only only one phone makers (none of which to this period impact the rachis to land it publically but each and every of which impact today become up with their “plan B”), 2. Microsoft extracting licensing fees from these aforementioned phone makers in the modify of IP indemnification and 3. Amazon transport a wildly successful, still unidentifiable, edition of an older Android physique over the pass … and making it a disorderly success. Of the the three, #1 was completely avoidable but the another digit haw meet impact been the study of the mettlesome when there is so such at wager in the fisticuffs of who paints the programme for the incoming procreation of computing.
These changes stingy challenges for the developers who today requirement to attain whatever thickened choices. Over the holidays a developer someone asked me which Android should his move pore its energies on? Since his consort is making apps focused primarily on the U.S. and dweller market, it makes no significance for him to move obsessing most Huawei or ZTE at diminutive in the nearby term. Motorola and HTC are slipsliding away.
My respond to him was to go for Amazon Kindle Fire for tablets and Samsung for the phones. Samsung and Amazon both are outlay an dumbfounding turn of business dollars to encourage their platforms and it makes amend significance for diminutive startups (depending on their regional focus) to bond their aggregation with them. Between those digit platforms, he would be championship winners that would alter the maximal convey on assets for his lowercase company.
That is, and module be, the actuality of the Android ecosystem.
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