Samsung’s Debacle

A few months back I did a writeup about Tizen, Samsung’s alternative to Android and the one chance it has to break itself from Google.

Now, as we enter the fall after the bleak summer season in which many take a recess from this obsession with technology, we are on the cusp of what will come to define our conversations for the next year. That future, at least for Samsung’s Tizen, is looking less bright.

In July Samsung showed signs of slowing down with a decrease in smartphone sales and tablets across all its markets. Something that to many of us seemed all but impossible given their meteoric rise as the king of mobile. It’s not to say that Samsung is doomed. But rather there are larger forces at work within the global market that are, for the first time in years, chipping away at Samsung in various markets.

Guess what the biggest factor is?

Windows Phone.

I’m kidding! (Side note: Windows Phone has 2.5% market share)

It’s increased competition from Chinese companies that have made high quality phones at a cheap enough price for the ever expanding Chinese middle-class. This then impacts the phones sold to the developing world because those very phones sold to the Chinese market are often cheap enough to be reasonable in those market. These companies are smaller, more nimble and focus on consumer quality over the sheer bulk of phones sold. These are markets where Nokia once roamed wild and Samsung followed in its footsteps.

Aside from increase competition from Chinese markets (this is speculation on my part) we may be seeing a Samsung fatigue within the developed world for Samsung products. Many people within the United States are locked on two year contracts. For many who have been stuck on a Samsung smartphone of any variant, it has been an excruciating two years of mishandled software updates (or no updates at all) alongside the swift swift stagnation of practical smartphone innovation. For many, this is a time where the hardware race that came to define the inital onset of smartphone development are secondary to the overall experience provided. It’s how companies like Apple can continue to thrive despite maintaining a relatively smaller share of the market. It may also be the reason why many people who, once free of their two year contract, may be less open to another Samsung device. This retention rate is critical.

Because right now we are in the next stage of smart things. The development of the greater ecosystem.

It’s an area where Samsung should be able to thrive.

Name something.

Samsung probably builds a variant.

Yet. Here they are tied to Google.

The way I see it is that if Samsung wants to control the ecosystem they need Tizen. But, as we are seeing, the consumers ultimately dictate market trends. Where Goliath's like Samsung can be vulnerable. Tizen, then, looks like a bet that may be left best on the back-burner. Because if Samsung wants to compete in the war of ecosystems they need an ecosystem. This far into the smartphone age alongside the onset of the universal ecosystem it would be suicide to start over.

Samsung may not like it.

But they need Google more than Google needs Samsung.