Samsung plans to double its smartphone share by end of year, jump ahead of HTC and Motorola
By Thomas Ricker 
posted June 24th 2010 4:40AM
posted June 24th 2010 4:40AM
posted June 24th 2010 4:40AM
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Well, its not going to be me who will by their phones. HTC ftw!
@Inside yeah as a samsung phone owner, i'm going to do everything an individual can to stop the bastards. their post-sale support sucks. whether it's bug fixing or upgrading features, samsung fails to impress. their awesome hardware is the only selling point, but if there's anything i've learnt owning a samsung phone, it's that having hardware is useless if you don't get to use it for anything.
sitting next to me is a phone with an FM transmitter, with no drivers ever released for it. never buying samsung phones again. ever.
@brrip
http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/28/samsung-planning-android-1-6-update-for-behold-ii-but-thats/
A phone a year newer than my G1 and they plan to leave it at 1.6. Fuck samsung.
@Inside maybe samsung should stop making featurephones branded as smartphones and actually start making smartphones
@Inside
If HTC continue having all that issues, they will fall into a big hole
@shadowfix
Alright, conclusion, shut up and buy an iPhone. done. full stop.
@JAG
Just like how Apple fell into a hole when they had activation problems with the iPhone 3G, or their MacBooks had to have their motherboard replaced because of crappy NVIDIA cards or their Magsafe's started catching on fire. Oh no wait, Apple's still here...
@SteveBaldmer
wah wah.
too bad android has 9% marketshare. noone cares about android except nerds like you.
If Samsung treats all its customers like how it treats the Behold 2 owners (promised giving android OS updates, but failed to fulfil its promise), aint gonna happen, especially in the smart phone market!
@Blizzard That's a really, really bad comparison.
*To prevent any fanboy claims * I haven't bought an Apple product since the original iPhone. *
@brrip I hear you, I really do, and I know how much better their image would be in the historically knowledge consumer camps if they had just updated their phones. But the fact that their smartphone OS market share has always been so small has been part of their reason, I don't agree with it, but higher sales levels will bring higher support as we've seen with virtually every OEM and industry ever.
@brrip Not that their hardware's even that good. On their supposed flashship phone Galaxy S god phone, they decidedly not to include a camera flash. That's just evil probably fearing it might cannibalize their digital camera sales.
@Inside
Serious. They act like HTC and Motorola are gonna stand by and let this happen, rather than keep cranking out newer, awesomer phones.
Wait, actually, Motorola is going to stand by and let that happen.
But HTC sure as hell won't!
@Inside Don't forget that outside the US there aren't that many available smartphones. Go to Europe and the best one is the Galaxy S. Thereafter comes the Desire and I think the Hero...so yeah, at least they know how to ship world wide.
I guess they can do that by selling smart phones, promised a software update, and went ahead release a newer model instead of updating the previous model's software so people would buy new ones. Same old business model.
@pika2000 Yep. Nice people aren't they.
The interesting thing is that most of the Japanese feature-phones more feature rich and smarter than the smart-phones.
The only clear difference is larger screens, so I do not see what you mean by padding numbers.
@NewBie
Ok but who's talking about Japanese phones? We're talking about Samsung.
@tonicboy I mentioned Japanese feature-phones, because I have used only these so far (and know them very well), and do know there is no real difference between Japanese and Korean feature-phones (some even using Snapdragon processors). I have very little idea of US feature phones, and the article is about global share!
I've just played around with the ATT Captivate today with my EVO and the Dell Mini 3 side by side.. and as much as I love the EVO, that Samsung Captivate felt so sexy, thin and light!
Maybe Samsung is being aggressive, but that just means HTC will be working just as hard to combat this goal.
Just bought the Galaxy S and loving it. It is clear that Samsung that's attacking Nokia in full force currently will try to fight Nokia in the more expensive phones too. it's not the first time thought.
It is very plasticy that's a shame coming from Samsung that usually got good build quality.
Updating the software is the BIG ? from Samsung. Samsung is by far the worst compared to Apple, Nokia, HTC. Motorola is slow in here Europe to update it's devices, but Samsung most of the time doesn't update anything....
@Pdexter how exactly are they gonna fight nokia if they don't provide updates, which nokia does for almost every model (you know, anomalies like the N81 aside)
@brrip
By updating the new devices....
Samsung's hardware looks great but I just do not understand why they insist on putting crap like Touchwiz on their phones instead of just stock Android. At least HTC has a semi-decent track record of updating their phones, Samsung simply does not, so any sort of promise to update anything from them doesn't mean shit to me.
What is so wrong with regular Android that different manufacturers insist on adding their own skin on top of it? Sense, Motoblur (or Ninjablur? what the hell is that?), Touchwiz, etc, it just doesn't make any sense and only hurts the Android platform by perpetuating the fragmentation issues.
@grumbles In a word, an appstore. I'm guessing they want a monopoly over apps sold in their own store.
ahead of moto...maybe. ahead of HTC? good luck w/ that. here's one thing i can tell you for sure, i def don't think you're going to be winning over customers w/ touchwiz 3.0, 4.0, or even 5.0. but again, best of luck to you.
@simbadogg
Ahead MOTO?, no, never, not even HTC, samsung will have to be down these companies for a while
@JAG Here's something I can tell you for sure, HTC can't get to 10% market share with their current supply-chain issues. So, we can debate all day, actually I'll stop it here and not debate, but we can say Samsung wont get their because the market doesn't want their phones (though I'd say you're mostly seeing this from a biased, though probably well-informed vantage point, and that's going to hurt your prognostication).
Samsung competitive advantages:
Best Android proprietary screen tech
Best Android proprietary processor
Best Android proprietary processor road-map
Android OEM with the cheapest access to NAND
Putting together these advantages, plus the scaling ability of the 2nd largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world means they have a higher manufacturing ceiling than any Android OEM right now. They won't really capitalize on it until they raise their brand name/support on high-end devices while simultaneously cornering the middle part of Android (I'd actually say the low-end, however, it's their intention to fill this niche with Bada).
Any by the end of the year I plan to sleep with Scarlett Johansson and win the lottery. Best of luck to both of us Samsung!
I want to buy a Galaxy S but the 16GB model is exclusive to Vodafone contracts and I want unlocked PAYG :(
Waiting...
If Samsung aim to do this they need to concentrate on Android and WP7 phones and drop Bada OS.
Todays high end phone specs are tomorrows low end so I can't see a reason Android can't cover the whole spectrum within a short time frame.
@petebob796
People are so out of touch of the whole phone market here.
Android represents under 0.3% of all phones sold and i can tell you that BY FAR most people in this planet don't care about widgets and stuff that MeeGo, Android, iphone and Symbian offers.
Samsung and Nokia together sell a bit over 2.3 million phones A DAY. These two companies just simply can't example put OS like Android for all of their 200-700 euros phones and call it a day.
@Pdexter I fail to see what makes you think it's any cheaper for Samsung to put BADA OS on their phones or Nokia put Symbian on theirs (which is a lot of their range) than it is Android.
@petebob796 He's talking about appearing to a wide variety of consumers. WP7 isn't out yet and not everyone wants Android. Additionally, Bada will be more profitable for Samsung, so everyone who doesn't want Bada has to stop criticizing them for doing it because it's in their best interest to move feature phones into a marketplace where they get revenue from apps.
The fact that Engadget is reluctant to call Bada a smartphone OS but has no qualms about calling iOS a smartphone OS, though iOS is basically there now, but they so rarely in the past ever displayed qualms about using the term at will over the past 2 years is just their usual double standard being employed here.
Samsung has been hiring a bunch of software programmers in the recent months; since they have excellent hardware components they know that they also need an excellent software side to help raise your smartphone share...
I hope it pays off in the next few months since I'm buying a(n unlocked, international version of) Galaxy S in the next month.
btw, my first Samsung was the Blackjack which I gave to my brother for the original iPhone. He's still using it and is about to upgrade to Galaxy S too.
Im planning to be millionarie in december!!!!
Well, as a few people have pointed out already: as an owner of an original Samsung Galaxy, still on 1.5 and with little to no aftermarket support, I'm never buying a phone from Samsung again.
HTC for me next I think.
1st things first...
The general consumer is not impressed by the term 'AMOLED' he/she doesn't care and it is not going to make them buy your phone...
@jamiesim
To be fair to Samsung, the AMOLED screen on the Galaxy is probably its best feature. Not great in the sun, but in doors it beats almost any other phone I've seen.
Doesn't make up for them being asshats however.
Samsung makes ugly phones with horrible software.
Stay away from them.
HTC FTW!
Go Moto GO
they make great tvs
More Super AMOLED, less TouchWiz please.
Media talks Apple, the world buys Nokia.
Samsung = high spec , poor software and support
The only way I see Samsung increasing its smartphone marketshare is if they unlock their bootloaders and make cooking and installing cooked ROM's easier than HTC. Lets face it. Android is the new Windows Mobile and that's thanks to Samsung. You can't count on Samsung to provide OS updates so you are better off getting an HTC. At least if HTC fails to provide updates, you know xda-developers will.
@CeluGeek +1, This would help them, I hope Samsung and all other OEMs see the success that HTC has in the developing community and how it helps their sales and they all migrate towards this.
The weird thing is that Samsung is good at updating some of their devices. I have their BD-P1600, which I bought in spring of 2009, and they just pushed me a firmware update a week or two ago. I wonder why their cellphone division is different?
I Got one, I bought one becouse it has the Digital Tv on it, here in Brazil we have free of charge Digital Tv for mobile devices, the same as Japan (our is beter than Japan becouse its 30fps and on Japan its 15fps).
This coming from a company who named their most recent phone ":)"
http://www.switched.com/2010/06/23/samsung-names-its-phone-we/
Maybe they need to focus on a more realistic goal, like getting a dictionary and a thesaurus first.