Forget Apple: Samsung Could Be Google's Next Big Rival 223
Nerval's Lobster writes "The idea of Samsung as a Google rival isn't unprecedented. For the past several quarters, Samsung has progressively molded Android to its own vision: layered with TouchWiz and sprinkled with all sorts of Samsung-centric apps, the software interface on Samsung devices is deviating rapidly away from the 'stock' Android that runs on other manufacturers' devices. During this year's unveiling of the Samsung Galaxy S4 at New York City's Radio City Music Hall, Samsung executives onstage barely mentioned the word 'Android,' and played up features designed specifically for the device. Establishing its own brand identity by moving away from 'stock' Android has done Samsung a lot of good: its smartphones and tablets not only stand out from the flood of Android devices on the market, but it's given the company an opportunity to position itself as the one true rival to iOS. While other Android manufacturers struggle, Samsung has profited. If Samsung continues to gain strength, it could become a huge issue for Google, which has its own eye on the hardware segment. Although Google purchased Motorola in 2011 for $12.5 billion, it hasn't yet remolded the brand in its own image, claiming that the subsidiary's existing pipeline of products first needs to be flushed into the ecosystem. But that reluctance could be coming to an end: reports suggest that Google will pump $500 million into marketing the Moto X, an upcoming 'hero' smartphone meant to reestablish Motorola's dominance of the Android space. If the Moto X succeeds, and Google decides to push aggressively into the branded hardware space, it could drive Samsung even further away from core Android. Never mind issuing TouchWiz updates until the original Android interface is virtually unrecognizable—with its industry heft, Samsung could potentially boot Google Play from the home-screen and substitute it with an apps-and-content hub of its own design. That would take a lot of work, of course: first, Samsung would need to build a substantial developer ecosystem, and then it would need to score great deals with movie studios and other content providers. But as Amazon and Apple have shown, such things aren't impossible. The only questions are whether (a) Samsung has the will to devote the necessary time and resources to such a project, and (b) if it's willing to transform its symbiotic relationship with Google into an antagonistic one."
Rival, yes. Biggest, no. (Score:5, Informative)
Choice (Score:5, Informative)
As more features are added to new versions of Android from Google it takes longer for Samsung to merge its changes into that new version
Why? I hate to say it but as a programmer, I would find it shocking if there is not a massive move towards making sure that as little work as possible is needed in making sure that Samsung changes are not trivial to apply.
I find it even more surprising considering that Android is pretty modular in the interface, You can swap all interface elements, many are sold in their play store I own several.
I find it even more surprising again In fact Google is moving most of their first party applications out of the core OS, making it easy to update whatever version of Android you are running.
Except its not (Score:4, Informative)
A year too late..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history [wikipedia.org] A quick look shows 4.1.2 only released October last year. 4.2.2 was released in February.
Samsung plan on skipping a version. I am not sure I am against that strategy, and could see a whole host of reasons why they would do so.
Welcome to standards :) (Score:5, Informative)
In the real world, you have *either* competition *or* interoperability.
Hardware USB, SATA, HDMI, WIFI 802.11 standards
Software OpenGL ES, JAVA, HTML5
Re:this is ridiculous (Score:5, Informative)
I was sort of with you until I got to this:
They are also successful because they sell phones with styli which is very important in asian countries where the pen is used to write letters of the alphabet.
Why the stylus? Is Google Pinyin banned from the S4 or something? Works great on both my S3 and Tab 2 for writing Chinese characters. (They're not letters, BTW.)
All the Chinese people I know--including my partner--use pinyin input method of some sort for this, not a stylus. The capability has existed for ages on Windows, Android, and Linux (and I would be extremely surprised if MacOSX and iOS didn't provide it also).
So I'm forced to call bullshit.
(I wish they'd hurry up with the Linux port for Google Pinyin because the latest updates to SCIM have broken it horribly and now I can only write Chinese using my phone or tablet.)
Re:this is ridiculous (Score:5, Informative)
Not everybody uses Pinyin in greater China. People in Hong Kong and Taiwan for example usually use T9, or some other quick input method based on brush strokes. But for some complicated words you can't find, it's just easier to use the pen. Handwriting recognition is very accurate in Chinese as the number and direction of the brush stroke is matched to a database of words. There is a system on how you write each Chinese character in terms of brush strokes and there is usually only one way to write it properly. It is also a natural way of inputting characters if you haven't had previous exposures to computers, for the elderly, for example. Another reason is that not everybody speaks Mandarin (Pinyin is romanization system for Mandarin). Pinyin in Hong Kong will probably never catch on.
Re:this is ridiculous (Score:4, Informative)
There's pinyin for Cantonese as well. And some folks use bopomofo or whatever it's called, right.
And yes, I know how Chinese characters are written and the stroke-order rules and so forth, since I am working on achieving HSK Level 1 proficiency currently and know a couple hundred of them.
In any case, in my trips to HK/Guangzhou and amongst my Chinese friends here, I've never seen anything being used except the keyboard for text input, and my partner, who's a Guangzhou native and Cantonese speaker, tells me use of the stylus is fairly rare and definitely not an everyday thing. She herself has never even owned one, and got through 2 Uni degrees in China just fine without one.
So I reject the OP's contention that stylus support is a significant factor in adoption, and therefore regard his other assertions as suspect.
Re:this is ridiculous (Score:4, Informative)
Not where I live. Ever tried to get an update for a Sony Experia or the like? Sony is absolutely the worst provider in terms of software - all over the entire productline, from their TV's, to their mobile devices, to the Playstation.
Samsung may be slow and install a lot of crapware on the phone. But unlike the writer of the article I think that's not an asset but a weakness. I'm buying the phone for the hardware. And Android with regular updates. Nothing else.