Slashdot Mirror
Samsung Could Soon Start To Twist Google's Arm
Hugh Pickens writes "For the past three years, Android has experienced a kind of free space expansion, but as we enter 2012, it seems the game may be changing. Instead of the old 'there's more than enough room for every Android handset maker to be a winner,' we have a three-horse's-length leader: Samsung shipping close to 55% of all Android phones, while Motorola and HTC lag behind. '[Samsung] could be in a position to twist Google's arm,' writes Jean-Louis Gassée.'If last quarter's trend continues — if Motorola and HTC lose even more ground — Samsung's bargaining position will become even stronger.' But what is Samsung's 'bargaining position'? What could they want? Perhaps more search referral money, earlier access to Android releases, or a share of advertising revenue. Will Google let Samsung gain the upper hand? It's not likely, because Motorola is about to become a fully-owned but 'independent' Google subsidiary, and its 16% of the Android market could counterbalance Samsung's influence to some extent. So what could Samsung do? 'Consider the Kindle Fire example: Just like Amazon picked the Android lock, Samsung could grab the Android Open Source code and create its own unlicensed but fully legal smartphone OS and still benefit from a portion of Android apps, or it could build its own app store the way Amazon did,' writes Gassée. 'Samsung is a tough, determined fighter and won't let Google dictate its future. The same can be said of Google. This is going to be interesting.'"
Google is in the same position Microsoft was a decade ago. It has money coming out its ears and not much to buy. Samsung could annoy Google enough that Google gets into the mobile business. Just like Microsoft and the xbox, Google can afford to lose money every year pretty much until it has a winner or it gets bored and finds another shiny toy. If you were selling half of all the Android phones, would you want to rock the boat?
This sounds very hypothetical. Is there any indication they're actually doing this? Just because Samsung sells slightly over 50% of all Android phones, that doesn't automatically give them a huge amount of bargaining power. There are lots of other companies with competitive phones ready to grab market share if Samsung stumbles. And any attempt by Samsung to fork the OS would have a high risk of hurting their market share and giving those companies exactly the opportunity they want.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Speculating about what might happen when you have no idea where the market is going or what the Android vendors might want is silly. Just watch as people get riled up about what they come up in their own paranoid imaginations and scream about how wrong it all is... this is gonna be a fun topic to read. :)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Why the fuck do people get all us versus them over a GODDAMN PHONE! I mean really, its a bloody phone...
Amazon (like Apple) have the content people want available directly through their tablet.
Samsung copy the looks of trendy tech. They don't seem to have much leverage really...
So the story is that Samsung sell so many phones/devices that they can strong arm Google now, although we do not know if they are doing this, or if they even want to do this, or what it is that they would want if they did actually do it. We don't even know exactly how many units they are selling!
But we do know that Google would have no choice but to acquiesce, otherwise Samsung could turn to Windows Phone (which would ruin Samsung's sales overnight), or they could fork the OS and make their own version - even though that would also result in their sales dropping.
This story is just some people coming up with some make believe stories, and citing each other to back them up.
In the middle ages, one of the popes got all the kings of Europe together, and told them, "You shouldn't fight each other so much." The kings looked at each other, confused, and asked, "What do we do then, if we aren't fighting?"
Maybe people fight over the phone because they have nothing else to do. And really, arguing which phone is better is a harmless way to spend your time. About the same harm level as raging over people who get all 'us versus them' over a phone.
My remark was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but why wouldn't they be? The iPhone 4S has been the top selling handset for months, and iOS sees much more third-party developer support--developer support for Android actually decreased in 2011. And iOS is the #1 mobile OS on the web, which suggests a large portion of Android users are budget buyers who aren't even using their smartphones as smartphones.
I don't say all this to further more smartphone OS wars but to point out that the stereotypical image of Android as some all-devouring conquerer isn't accurate. When iPads and iPods are counted, iOS actually has more total marketshare--for whatever marketshare is worth in terms of "victory", which isn't as much as Slashdotters think.
We all understand that your retirement and pension funds are all in Apple stock.
However, Samsung has one advantage: They don't lock their bootloaders. This means that obsolete phones will be easily updated to CyanogenMod, and that is as good as any OS comes, as it is updated and maintained extremely well.
Wake me up when the iPhone can have a blacklist of incoming phone messages or IMs, or other functionality Steve or Tim deliberately chose to eschew, and lock out third party alternatives. (Without jailbreaking, of course... relying on a JB app is pointless when an OS update + being forced to restore can lock you out for months.)
Toys?
A friend of mine got an iPad 2 for Christmas. By New Years he had it on his corporate VPN, administrating his Oracle RAC and vSphere from my living room while we watched movies. The Windows remote desktop programs are very good. So are the Microsoft Office document readers.
If all you are finding are toy apps, you're not looking hard enough or you're limiting yourself to the free stuff.
There's an emotional attachment to Android in certain tech communities because it runs Linux and it's from Google. It's been positioned as an open alternative, which taps into that desire to feel like a freedom fighter battling against evil closed corporations. A lot of the ideals that Android has been marketed with not so coincidentally align with the stereotypical desires of communities like Slashdot.
Certainly, there's an emotional attachment to Apple products from its fans, but they've spent so many years as underdogs that they don't obsess over marketshare numbers the way Android fans do. Their smugness comes from a "quality over quantity" mindset. Marketshare is relatively unimportant when it comes to determining the success of a product, but it gets fetishized around here like crazy.
>> Plays 1% of my movies
Cinexplayer or Air Video. VLC if you're jailbroken will play anything.
>> no functional bluetooth
Please elaborate. Bluetooth works great for me (headsets, speakers, keyboards, tethering, etc).
>> no emulators
Tons of emulators for jailbroken devices.
>> Pretty much all apps are toys.
Not even close. I have dozens of non-toy apps on my phone, and there are obviously tens of thousands more. You're not looking.
The real question is, if you don't like iOS, why did you get an iPhone AND an iPad?? Didn't you realize after one that you don't like it?
Google isn't in this to 'win' and control a handset platform. They're in it to not 'lose' to Apple: they spent all that money and effort creating Android so that the mobile platform wasn't completely controlled by Apple (who could then dictate terms on advertising on that platform).
Remember, Google isn't about making money from technology. It's about making money from advertising, and it uses technology to keep anyone else from threatening its advertising revenue.
Google has made Chrome for the same reasons... to prevent Microsoft from controlling the browser platform and defaulting everyone to Bing. The fact that they also use this to drive standards adoption and technological advancement in browsers is a secondary bonus strategy.
The other nice side-effect of this strategy is that we get (more or less) open platforms and improving technology. But that's a side-effect not the main purpose, and should the mindset at Google change, or the market change, expect their attitudes to 'open and improving' to change.
Google's nightmare would be that Microsoft pays Samsung a lot of money to default all their devices to Bing. As long as they don't do that, I'm not sure Google gives a monkey's what Samsung do with their market dominance.
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
Samsung already tried to create their own OS, Bada. Its a failure. It has gained no traction. Nobody cares about it.
If they try to push their own market, they'll likely lose more than just the Market - they'll lose all google experience Application. This includes Gmail, Maps, Navigation, Translate, etc. Basically the shity that makes android cool (yeah iPhone guy, thats awesome that you have tomtom, but I didn't have pay shit for my turn by turn and its just as good when I'm in coverage).
Samsung is making a TON of fucking money selling their devices. Their bada devices, on the other hand, don't sell at all. The moment they sell an Android phone without the google experience apps - and required ordinary users to hack the device to get those apps? That phone will have shit sales, carriers will return stock, and they'll be forced to reflash all of these devices with a proper version of android, and encur the repackaging costs for doing so.
Of course they're smart. They already know this. Prediction: They're going to continue to be the #1 smart phone maker - and they're not gonna screw that up - anymore than they can with their shitty TouchWiz interface.
What's that word begging with H?
Hypothesis... no.
Hypnosis... no
Hypocrite! There it is.
Seriously, if you dismiss jailbreaking out of hand for the iPad and yet claim in the same breath that your "rooted" Xoom does a heck of a lot more, then you're letting your bias show.
Now, whether you should buy an iPad (or a Xoom) in the first place if several things you need are only accessible through jailbreaking is another matter entirely, but you cannot have your cake and eat it.