Get rid of the removable battery and micro SD card?
That’s like kicking out the drummer and the bass player, hard core fans are not going to like that.
However tech is not like music. In music it’s about establishing a catalogue of hits so you can tour until you die. The future is important, but it’s about the past even more.
In tech if you’re not on the bleeding edge, you’re gonna die, which is what was happening to Apple – it just did not have large enough phones. And it turned out people wanted phablets. Because the whole world is going mobile, that’s where you not only surf and connect, but buy too. It’s like satirist Gary Shteyngart‘s “Super Sad True Love Story” come to life.
And Apple perfected the smartphone.
Let’s not forget, once again, that the Cupertino company was not there first, nor do you have to be – that’s a big story in tech, that the bleeding edge does not often succeed.
MySpace was replaced by Facebook and Rhapsody was overtaken by Spotify and the iPhone kicked the BlackBerry and Treo to the curb. And to win it’s not about marketing so much as functionality. If it just works, people will use it.
Hell, we’re still fighting this war with television remotes.
Can someone make a device I can comprehend that will work with all my devices? (Don’t e-mail me your solution, the lack of a clear-cut winner dominating public consciousness speaks to my point.)
ANYWAY, Samsung ruled and now it’s an afterthought.
Furthermore, by following the crowd they’re drowning the company. Never give up your uniqueness, it’s what adheres people to you. Whether it be the quirky, center console ignition in Saabs or the quirky boxiness of Volvos, the people keeping those brands alive loved those. But, of course, brands are not forever. Especially in tech, where ramp-up costs are smaller.
So Samsung triumphed as the anti-Apple, giving people what they wanted and allowing them to give the middle finger to Steve Jobs‘s company all the while.
But it turns out that’s all they had. There was no there there. Despite being a Korean company, Samsung was positively Detroit, where the exterior counts and the interior is irrelevant.
Detroit’s lunch was eaten by the Japanese, who knew that people would drive the ugliest cars if they just worked, and they did. And now Toyota is a juggernaut and if you’re purchasing an American car you must not have gotten the memo or are financially-challenged, because you just have to read “Consumer Reports” to know that the Japanese own reliability.
But we’re not looking for reliability in phones. We want functionality and something that lasts for two years, when we upgrade. And Samsung made a phone for all people, some for the cutting edge tinkerers and some for the poor. But now Apple has reclaimed its hold on the high end and Xiaomi has eaten up the low end and Samsung is toast.
Because it’s about form not content, design not intellectual property.
It’s not so different in the music business. He who writes the songs wins in the end. Sure, ASCAP and BMI are fighting Pandora, but the truth is there’s a ton of money in a hit song still, and it lasts forever.
So what did we learn here? What are the translatable elements?
Play to your hard core. Never abandon them. Sure, change is hard, but keep what they like and add new features. The Galaxy S6 is a me-too iPhone for people who hate Apple, huh?
Content drives everything. It’s not what the phone looks like, but what it can do.
Apps come to Apple first.
Apple has cutting edge payment technology. Apple integrates all its devices.
Apple has a culture, whereas Samsung does not.
And it’s culture that keeps your company alive.
Microsoft is getting killed in phones. Google too.
You go where the people are not.
Apple is not forever. Nothing is forever. Success is about knowing where you’ve been and marching into the wilderness at the same time. Hell, look at our dearly-departed hero Steve Jobs. He lost Apple, foundered at NeXT and then returned triumphantly at Apple, but not immediately, the prognosticators still said the enterprise was going to go bankrupt or be sold. These same people today tell us about BlackBerry’s chances. It’s over. What next, the Doobie Brothers topping the pop chart?
Good ideas are a dime a dozen.
Execution is so much harder. Marrying the two is incredibly difficult. Samsung had excellent execution and lame ideas. Furthermore, they were beholden to Google for software, which is akin to not writing your own songs.
Apple won by matching great ideas with incredible execution.
And, over time, they’ve established a fanbase. Sure, the naysayers and media want to tear them down, but there were people who hated the Beatles in the sixties. You never react, you just go your own way. And you’ve got to give Apple CEO Tim Cook credit for this – he never caved into the media, never mind so many on Wall Street who wanted his head.
So we’ll all have mobile devices. Hell, we already do.
So what’s next?
That’s how you win. Knowing what’s next. Samsung has been a me-too company from its inception. They made better flat panels than Sony and bigger handsets than Apple. But innovation is not spoken there.
…Everybody remembers what once was and is waiting for those days to return.
But they’re never coming back. Samsung is screwed, on the high end and low. Its only chance is to break new ground, but it’s seemingly unable to, remember the company’s disastrous smartwatch?
Remember the rest of the album from the artist with the hit single?
Neither do I.
Excellent piece.
I do think that Samsung plays by different rules, or, actually, no rules at all, so I wouldn’t count them out just yet.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/micwright/100007374/apple-may-be-ruthless-but-samsung-is-a-ferocious-fiefdom-that-plays-by-its-own-rules/
“So we’ll all have mobile devices. Hell, we already do.”
Not true, actually.
Many of us don’t use mobile phones, and not because we’re all Pat Robertson Luddites. The downsides to the devices are numerable:
Health: Since 2011 it’s been recognized that cell phone radiation is a probable carcinogen, as well as a contributor to Alzheimer’s, despite the protestations of the industry;
Privacy: Is this even worth enumerating? I suppose so: last November’s FREAK hack put paid to the notion of secure transactions via mobile devices; the OpenSSL libraries used to secure Apple/Android pay schemes –and much else on the Innernetz– have proved vulnerable 3 times just in the last physical year. In addition there’s that whole have-to-take-the-battery-out thing in order to avoid geo-tracking of your person (assuming, that is, a smaller trickle-charge battery hasn’t already been soldered in on the board itself.) What? You don’t think anyone is listening in and recording? More fool you…
Rudeness: I defy you to name more than a handful of people world-wide who use their cell phones in a manner respectful of their surroundings; the preponderance of people have long since confused the devices with Mr. Microphones;
Ball & chain: seriously, what person needs to be instantly reachable at all times? Other than (in this country) the president, no one. I repeat, no one needs be tethered to a cell phone. E.G., you receive a call telling you a loved one is dying and you’ll…what? Don a cape and mask and fly over to save them? Get over yourself: just because you learn of news/events near instantly, that does not empower you to do anything about those situations, any more than had you learned of the news 5 minutes later by landline.
Granted…OnStar is a great, situation-specific implementation of the technology, but carrying a cell phone around is nothing but self important wishful thinking.
Plus you look like a total tool standing gape-jawed in the supermarket aisle listening to you wife/girlfriend direct your life.
Wanna have some fun? Try explaining the concept of a ‘party line’ (once commonplace) to a young person today… or a land-line… and a rotary phone.
The initial “cool!” response theirs at hearing/imagining the meaning words ‘party line’ is soon replaced with a look of bewilderment as you elucidate. Nod Beatles, ‘yesterday, cell phones were a dream so far away’… Kerouac still uses a rotary phone (a land-line looks cool and is more stylish, my throwback opine.)
It used to be the case that those small ‘throwaway’ cell phones (the type criminals use) were too small. When I thence used them, thought ‘soon they’ll be the size of a postage stamp’, Kerouac’s already too ham-handed trouble entering a telephone number upon a microscopically small keypad destined to be magnified, irony intended.
Came then/lives now the smart phone: big, bulky and pretentious – as in too much x3. Sort of like carrying around a mini-desktop computer in your hands, same conversely attached to your belt via an industrial size holder.
Turn once more to EM Cioran: “progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard its predecessors”.
Westport 1-7100. Get a free silver dollar with your estimate. Right there with you, K-Dawg. Although, I am a smartphone user. Like most things, it can be used for good or evil.
I don’t have a smart phone either. really don’t want one. my wife, who has much more need for one by way of checking work email and all, got one recently.
I think she’s forgotten now what I look like because she’s always looking at IT. she’s become ‘one of those people.’ (btw… it’s a Samsung.)
I’m an Apple person. I did however own one of the first Samsung smart phones because I liked the Samsung TV I had at the time. The phone lasted less than 6 months. The TV died soon after that.
I like Apple because they offer a lot even though the original price is usually higher. The only thing I see that Samsung has over the iPhone is the photo quality.
This is an interesting and informative article on the Education gap between Americans and the rest of the world. It ties in really well with this article and finishes with this statement.
“…Generation X had to understand its toys in order to play with them. There is nothing creative about a tablet or a smartphone. You can’t do anything on it. It’s basically a dumb terminal on the mainframe of the Internet. These digital natives are actually digital cargo cultists, comfortably familiar using things they don’t actually know the first thing about. As far as they’re concerned, it might as well be magic.”
Here is the article.
http://barelyablog.com/the-data-are-in-even-american-phds-are-dumber/