“The launch of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 will further cement the company as the world’s number one handset and smartphone vendor”, says Ovum, but is this enough to guarantee the company’s longer term success?
Ovum’s principal device analyst, Tony Cripps, believes “Samsung still has some major decisions to take to determine what its future role will be in the larger digital economy” and considers if the company must finally bite the bullet and take a tighter grip on its ecosystem than its alliance with Google currently allows:
“Samsung has been steadily building its reputation as the leading provider of Android smartphones since the launch of the first Galaxy S in 2010 and there’s no immediate indication that this lead will suddenly collapse. However, while Samsung continues to grow its shipments impressively the company undermines its own position in the broader ecosystem by providing Google a huge mobile platform from which to influence consumers, application developers and advertisers. It is very difficult for Samsung to achieve that level of influence itself while it depends on Google to supply device software and key applications and services through Android.
“This is not necessarily a problem; assuming Samsung is happy in that role – it can still have a very worthwhile business selling huge volumes of devices. However, lacking a powerful ecosystem of its own clearly positions the company lower down in the value chain than either Google or Apple. This also paves the way for a more consolidated attack on its hardware business from below by manufacturers such as Huawei.
If Samsung is serious about increasing its relevance in the lager digital economy it needs to move to rectify this situation sooner rather than later.”
Is this the Samsung Galaxy S4?
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