- Oct 9, 2004
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Ben Bajarin (one of the few market analysts known for actually understanding tech) just made a pretty bold prediction: that Samsung will exit the phone business by 2020.
What do you think?
I think it's entirely possible that Bajarin will be wrong, and he may be the first to admit as much. However, he does have a point. Samsung, like all phone makers that don't depend largely on their own OS, is a slave to commoditization: it can't compete on much else besides price, since it's just another Android vendor in the end. Why keep making Android phones when there's less and less money in it, and you can make a larger profit by selling chips and displays instead?
It's been discussed before, but there really does seem to be a valid parallel between smartphones and what happened to the PC market, where the Windows PC market is slowly shrinking and most of the profit has consolidated within the hands of a few companies (particularly Apple). I can't help but imagine that Samsung knows this -- the GS6 wasn't a mistake so much as an attempt to see if a big Android OEM can escape the commoditization black hole that caught Windows vendors. Well, from early indications, it can't (even a $120 price cut hasn't saved the GS6). It may have to accept that the Galaxy S' glory days are over, and that has to cede the high end to Apple.
What do you think?
I think it's entirely possible that Bajarin will be wrong, and he may be the first to admit as much. However, he does have a point. Samsung, like all phone makers that don't depend largely on their own OS, is a slave to commoditization: it can't compete on much else besides price, since it's just another Android vendor in the end. Why keep making Android phones when there's less and less money in it, and you can make a larger profit by selling chips and displays instead?
It's been discussed before, but there really does seem to be a valid parallel between smartphones and what happened to the PC market, where the Windows PC market is slowly shrinking and most of the profit has consolidated within the hands of a few companies (particularly Apple). I can't help but imagine that Samsung knows this -- the GS6 wasn't a mistake so much as an attempt to see if a big Android OEM can escape the commoditization black hole that caught Windows vendors. Well, from early indications, it can't (even a $120 price cut hasn't saved the GS6). It may have to accept that the Galaxy S' glory days are over, and that has to cede the high end to Apple.