Samsung's Position On Tizen May Hurt Developer Recruitment 93
CowboyRobot sends in an article about how Samsung's constantly shifting plans for its smartwatches are making it hard for developers to commit to building apps. Quoting:
"Samsung's first smartwatch, released in October last year, ran a modified version of Google's Android platform. The device had access to about 80 apps at launch, all of which were managed by a central smartphone app. Samsung offered developers an SDK for the Galaxy Gear so they could create more apps. Developers obliged. Then Samsung changed direction. Samsung announced a new series of smartwatches in February: the Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo, and Gear Fit. Unlike the first device, these three run Samsung’s Tizen platform. ... This week, Samsung made things even more interesting. Speaking to Reuters, Yoon Han-kil, senior vice president of Samsung’s product strategy team, said the company is working on a watch that will use Google’s Android Wear platform. In other words, Samsung will bring three different watches to market with three different operating systems in under a year."
So ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So basically they're just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks? I suppose that's one way to avoid choosing the wrong platform ...
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shotgun approach... works in a product infancy phase... sometimes
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It's certainly broken.
http://gigaom.com/2014/01/17/m... [gigaom.com]
Samsung have managed to be successful with Android where other phone manufacturers have made losses on it. But it's having as little success with other Linux phone OSs as everyone else is.
They'd do best by sticking with Android. But maybe Google are making that increasingly difficult for them. It sucks not to be in control of your own OS.
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Apple toady calls Samsung broken but. [appleinsider.com]
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Samsung would swap places with Apple in a heartbeat if they could.
"Apple was particularly dominant, as it generated around $133 billion in profits, or just under 62% of the total. Samsung trailed far behind but still generated a healthy $56 billion in profits, or around 26% of the total."
http://bgr.com/2014/03/18/appl... [bgr.com]
If you think marketshare is more important to a company than profit, then you don't understand business. Samsung is doing well compared to most mobile phone manufacturers. But they are far b
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Haha, no. It is quite elementary that sacrificing market share while increasing prices is a fine recipe for short term gain and long term pain.
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You have that the wrong way around. Sacrificing profitability for market share is the dangerous route.
Apple is the biggest and one of the longest established companies in tech. They've always valued profitability over market share. There's no short-termism here.
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Really? Apple nearly went out of business in the late 90's because of that business model. You can only go for big margins when your products offer major value over the competition.
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You can only go for big margins when your products offer major value over the competition.
Exactly. That was Apple's problem in the 90s. Their product offerings had become dated and uninspiring. Now they justify their premium. That's how they made a big turnaround.
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Fast forward to 2014. Apple's products have become dated and uninspiring.
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I'm afraid that's your wish rather than reality.
This was the 90s Mac before the iMac. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
Dull beige PC looking thing with equally uninspiring specs.
The current iMacs, Macs, Macbooks, Macbook Air, iPhone 5, iPad and iPad Mini are certainly not dull and uninspiring. And the specs of every one are amongst the best in the industry. Customer satisfaction is the very best in the industry, and has been every year for more than a decade.
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I'm afraid that's your wish rather than reality.
It would appear to be reality judging from Apple's shrinking market share. For kids, Apple products are something your mom has.
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Earnings out today. iPhone sales up 17% YoY. Like every quarter.
As I say, you're in fantasy land.
For kids, Apple products are something your mom has.
If that is so, what's the problem? Mom is the one with the money, not the kids. It's certainly true that iPhone is more popular with moms than Android is. Do you have something against women? Or just women with children?
Other things iPhone users are more likely to be:
Urban, graduates, liberal, more wealthy, optimists, extroverts, have travelled abroad, be early adopters, have used the internet since the early da
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Samsung have managed to be successful with Android where other phone manufacturers have made losses on it. But it's having as little success with other Linux phone OSs as everyone else is.
They'd do best by sticking with Android. But maybe Google are making that increasingly difficult for them. It sucks not to be in control of your own OS.
I do think it's exaggeration.
If you look at the Android, more innovations comes from the Android OEMs than from the Google. Tablet support, advanced camera features, multitasking, multi-window, fingerprint sensor, wearable, in-vehicle infortainment - all first were done by EOMs. Google? Fancy UI gimmicks and G+ integration everywhere.
It is really hard to imagine how one can compete with Android right now due to market inertia.
But then, if you look at the reasons why Samsung went for Tizen with the cur
Re:So ... (Score:5, Funny)
So basically they're just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks? I suppose that's one way to avoid choosing the wrong platform ...
Anything that makes "wearables" die out faster is good in my book. Keep releasing different models all running different OSes and all doing different versions of nothing useful. Manufactured product pushes are like diarrhea. The sooner all the products exit the pipeline, the sooner corporate sees that marketing was blowing smoke up their ass when they told them "wearables" were going to be hot, the sooner I don't have to hear about them and, hopefully, the sooner that marketing dipshit is fired.
The same goes for the asshole who decided that Wendy's, Carl's Jr/Hardees, and Sonic all had to jump on the non-existent pretzel bun bandwagon. Oh wait, nobody actually wanted those? Better jump on the ciabatta bandwagon! That failed too?! Well what about brioche? Still no boost in sales? Revert back to our "classic" buns to save money and leverage our brand!
Re:So ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything that makes "wearables" die out faster is good in my book. Keep releasing different models all running different OSes and all doing different versions of nothing useful. Manufactured product pushes are like diarrhea. The sooner all the products exit the pipeline, the sooner corporate sees that marketing was blowing smoke up their ass when they told them "wearables" were going to be hot, the sooner I don't have to hear about them and, hopefully, the sooner that marketing dipshit is fired.
The same goes for the asshole who decided that Wendy's, Carl's Jr/Hardees, and Sonic all had to jump on the non-existent pretzel bun bandwagon. Oh wait, nobody actually wanted those? Better jump on the ciabatta bandwagon! That failed too?! Well what about brioche? Still no boost in sales? Revert back to our "classic" buns to save money and leverage our brand!
Sometimes the product vision is right but the timing or state of technology is wrong. I think wearables might fall into that category but it's too soon to tell. Groundwork and thought leadership today could reap rewards later. Apple's first tablet was such a colossal failure that many, including me, predicted the same for their second attempt. I was definitely wrong.
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Dude, you bet against the iPad? I wish I could have been there to take that bet.
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> Apple's first tablet was such a colossal failure that many, including me, predicted the same for their second attempt. I was definitely wrong.
The first tablet was the Newton, and that failed, then years later iPad. I definitely heard of the Newton and I think so did everyone else who was a Simpsons fan at the time:
http://i30.photobucket.com/alb... [photobucket.com]
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He said he predicted failure for their SECOND tablet. Which was the iPad.
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Sad thing was, I got much more utility out of my Newton than my iPad. I don't even know *where* my iPad is right now, and I'm not even sure where to look for it. It could be stolen for all I know.
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Because you didn't have a mobile phone then and you do now?
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Hmmm. That's a good point, especially since I carry around a big boat Note 2. But there's something I did with my Newton that I still don't do with any electronic device and that is take notes. It's the only device I ever had that recognized my native handwriting (not printing, not Graffiti from the Palm OS era), which is an amazing feat because I can barely read my own handwriting.
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He said he predicted failure for their SECOND tablet. Which was the iPad.
Yes, this is what I meant, and I was far from the only one saying so. Those who weren't Apple fanbois mostly predicted the iPad to be nothing more than an oversized iPod Touch filling a small niche that could only cannibalize from Apple's existing portfolio.
10" touchscreen tablets were totally unheard of, the Newton was a flop, and everyone hated laptops with touchscreens. A tablet, keyboardless computer had, in the history of mankind, never been successful. Plus the iPad was _expensive_. People would buy t
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Those who weren't Apple fanbois mostly predicted the iPad to be nothing more than an oversized iPod Touch filling a small niche that could only cannibalize from Apple's existing portfolio.
Not quite. It was those that are active haters of Apple, or those who do click-bait blogs that said things like that. Most people without an axe to grind thought that Apple would probably be as successful with it's new tablet as it was with it's previous categories of smartphone and music player.
And those haters and click-bait bloggers were wrong.
This is different. I'm seeing the middle ground of non-fanboys and non-haters as being unconvinced by wearables. That's not the same as the iPad.
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Plus the iPad was _expensive_.
No way. I can still remember the collective gasp that echoed through cyberspace when Apple announced the price for an entry grade iPad will cost $499. People were expecting something much closer to $1000.
At the time there was no basis of comparison except for netbooks and the iPod Touch.
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But this kind of thinking is what leads things to stagnate.
I'd rather see a bunch of companies put out a bunch of failed things to iterate over ideas. Wearables might be the future, if someone can crack that nut. I don't think having a smart phone UI shrunk down to a watch is ideal. It didn't work when they squeezed desktop UIs to mobile and tablet spaces.
Pebble's work is compelling, if poorly implemented.
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The trick to wearables is not to have a UI. Everyone has a powerful computer with a great UI in their pocket. Wearables should leverage that by providing absolute minimal controls (no more than 1 or 2 buttons/knobs, no more than a small digital watch like display) and should transmit their data to the users phone via BLE. Then an app on the phone should provide more advanced control and display of results. The value of wearables is in providing additional sensors for apps, not in UI.
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Blinking LED saying "battery low" or "New notification?" That's UI.
No visible face is still a UI. A UI that's controlled via a website or smartphone is still a UI.
A band with a battery and a crapload of sensors with no way to get the data off of it is useless.
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The data gets off it via bluetooth to a more powerful device. So yes, no UI at all.
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That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that whatever you do with the data, whether sync it to a PC or smart phone and use an application or web interface to interact with the data, or if it has a display, it's all UI.
So UI and UX people need to be cognizant of that.
Re:So ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Wearable" isn't something bad by definition. It's just that the approach they take to it could not be worse.
Everything that runs towards "wearable" today is basically a reskinned, retooled and reshaped smartphone. That's not really what wearable computing can or even should be. A wristwatch that is essentially a smartphone has nothing to do with wearable. It's a smartphone in a different format. Where is the "wearable" benefit?
If you want to create a wearable, create something where we actually benefit from "wearing" it rather than sticking it in a pocket. The least I'd expect from a wearable is having my hands free and either a HMD or a output interface that doesn't require me to take my eyes off whatever I'm busy with. Else there is exactly zero need to "wear" the gadget, I can as well take it into a hand.
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Water sports and winter activities are what come to mind, where you don't have pockets or pockets may be buried under other layers of clothing. And maybe visits to the naturist resort . . .
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The whole point of naturism is to avoid wearable anything.
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I don't know about you, when I go skiing, reaching a breast pocket with my cellphone is easier than digging through 2-3 layers of clothing to reach my wrist.
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Don't ski, for me reaching my watch has only been a matter of turning back the outer jacket cuff and maybe the mitten. When you're fishing the gloves are off a lot of the time anyway.
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Do you carry around a smartphone all the time? If you don't, many people do.
Isn't a wearable "just" a subset of an existing smartphone, or arguably an addition (due to using smartphone for communication with the wearable)?
I don't have any of the FitBit, etc., but they seem to have become reasonably popular for the early adopter crowd.
Basically, I don't see a need for a wearable currently either, but to completely throw out the idea seems rid
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Do you carry around a smartphone all the time? If you don't, many people do.
Isn't a wearable "just" a subset of an existing smartphone, or arguably an addition (due to using smartphone for communication with the wearable)?
I don't have any of the FitBit, etc., but they seem to have become reasonably popular for the early adopter crowd.
Basically, I don't see a need for a wearable currently either, but to completely throw out the idea seems ridiculous. It seems like just an extension of "more, comparatively powerful, personal electronics being used for specialized purposes to augment one's life".
They're trash because they don't do anything that isn't already:
A: Handled by your phone
B: Handled much better by a dedicated device
C: Both A & B
A good wearable device would be a blood glucose monitor for diabetics that shows real-time (or near-real-time) levels from an embedded sensor, removing the need for the person to sample and test periodically.
Or what about a wearable device people have been using for ages? Bluetooth headsets.
Good wearable devices REDUCE your need to rely on or interact with
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But they *are* a dedicated device, that's what I was trying to say.. Or at least they're "closer" to a dedicated device than a phone (e.g. maybe doing "physical activity" related measurements).
fast food changes (Score:2)
I have nearly quit bothering to try to support any 'new' things that come out from food places - anything I *like* will end up getting pulled anyway. I'm still bitter over the scrapping of the McDLT. The McDonald's Chicken Strips? Gone. Wendy's breakfast stuff? Liked them - gone. Wendy's super bar? Gone. I suspect the Taco Bell gorditas will go within 6 months of me developing a regular taste for them. It's a shame, because I want to support innovation, but the larger companies don't seem to be able to comm
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(small voice) But I like pretzel buns...
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Sounds like the standard Samsung business plan.
IBM and SONY syndrome? (Score:4, Interesting)
Long ago IBM split itself in to 7 internal subdivisions that could to a certain extent compete. At the time all of IBM's equipment ran on chips made by IBM for IBM products. The florida area sub-unit which didn't actually make any computers, put one together from intel chips. It was dubbed the PC. The OS was contracted out to some kids from Seattle.
Sony's products division is constantly at war with it's content division, leading to the constant hedging on content protection that defeats their products by using non-standard formats with DRM.
Perhaps Samsung, which is really a humungously diverse set of industries, just has different competing segments within itself. Each has a strategy that is aimed at competing with the other divisions strategy but has to be distinctly different due to the internal politics, just like IBM's PC did.
Its not s strategy to do everything, that's just the result.
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"different operating systems in under a year."
Yep, no different from MS, Qualcomm, or Intel.
But (Score:2)
I don't wear a wristwatch you insensitive clods
(I do have one around my neck on a lanyard along with a flashlight when I am at work)
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I like to wear watches. Recently lost my watch, Frownie face. But I don't want to get a new one because I'm holding out for an iwatch later this year. In the meantime, my wrist feels naked! I just hope the iwatch is sub $400.
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Very functional and attractive watches are available for 10s of dollars. What is it you are expecting an iWatch to do that would make it worth hundreds of dollars?
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I don't know, but I can't wait to find out!
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"shut up and take my money!" mentality.
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I'm actually in a similar boat and I agree--I see no overwhelming reason to replace my watch for the moment and I'll see what unfurls in the smart-watch realm. About the only time I seriously miss having a watch is when I'm bicycling and that's mostly due to an issue with my GPS-based bike computer.
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I like to wear watches. Recently lost my watch, Frownie face. But I don't want to get a new one because I'm holding out for an iwatch later this year. In the meantime, my wrist feels naked! I just hope the iwatch is sub $400.
I hope in the Apple tradition it is $666, and when you lose it like you lost your other ultra-losable hardware you make a Frowine face so hard it freezes that way.
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I hope in the Apple tradition it is $666, and when you lose it like you lost your other ultra-losable hardware you make a Frowine face so hard it freezes that way.
why would you say something mean? that makes me feel bad.
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II do have one around my neck
Oh yeah? [nerdup.ca]
What's the problem here? (Score:1)
They tried regular Android, it didn't work. So they used their own platform. Now Google had an Android platform specifically for these types of devices, so they are going back to Android.
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Nothing, so long as they don't care if developers ignore their schizophrenic platform.
One thing not pointed out (Score:5, Insightful)
In the case of Android Wear, if a developer targets that platform, they won't be limited to *just* Samsung.
This doesn't surprise me. While Android Wear likely won't compete much with the "mostly dumb" smartwatches that consist of only a display and UI for the phone they're tethered to (Sony Smartwatch, Pebble - both of these are able to achieve hardware cost reductions and battery life that Android Wear will never be able to match, putting AW consistently in a different price/functionality market segment than SW and Pebble), Android Wear was a DIRECT competitor for Galaxy Gear - both are in the "High standalone functionality" category. At least by hardware design, that is - a watch running Android should be able to operate almost entirely standalone, using a phone only as a data connection in a manner similar to Google Glass. Unfortunately Samsung totally fucked up Gear and while its hardware capabilities should have made it MORE capable of standalone operation than any other smartwatch out there, Gear wound up the LEAST capable of standalone operation instead - being the ONLY smartwatch which required one of a few specific models of phone as opposed to "any Android phone" (Sony) or "any Android phone or iOS" (Pebble)
By virtue of being in direct competition with Gear (e.g. identical market segment) AND the fact that it's superior, Wear is going to *crush* Gear. (Wear won't likely crush Pebble or Sony Smartwatch since they have the capability to play in a much lower-cost market segment than Wear will be able to due to having significantly lower hardware requirements.)
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You know those electronic tags that they sometimes put around convicts on parole? They go around the ankle and track the movements of the convict, and phone back to base to report them.
The concept of a wristwatch powered by a Google OS reminds me of electronic tagging.
Worth noting (Score:5, Interesting)
It's most likely that the three different platforms mentioned were developed and evangelized by three different teams at Samsung that never talked to each other. Each team probably thinks their solution is *the* solution.
When I worked at Samsung, divisions were heavily siloed, and often the first time you heard about what they were doing was when you saw it on a news site. Even within the same platform, teams were heavily divided. Our software dev outreach teams didn't even have a way to talk to the hardware design teams.
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It's most likely that the three different platforms mentioned were developed and evangelized by three different teams at Samsung that never talked to each other. Each team probably thinks their solution is *the* solution.
It's much simpler, actually.
1. Samsung released Gear, based on Android. Major complain: miserable battery life.
2. Samsung released Gear 2, based on Tizen to address the major complains, battery life among them.
3. Google warms up to wearables while at the same time upset about Samsung diverging (and not only on werables). They approach Samsung and pressure them to go back to the official Android way of doing things. Thus, potentially, next Gear might be based on the Android again.
When I worked at Samsung, divisions were heavily siloed, and often the first time you heard about what they were doing was when you saw it on a news site. Even within the same platform, teams were heavily divided. Our software dev outreach teams didn't even have a way to talk to the hardware design teams.
Haven't worked for Samsun
"too hard for developers" (sniff) (Score:4, Informative)
I don't understand the belly-aching. When I wrote code for Apple II machines, I had to know both BASIC and assembler. PC? Batch scripting, VB, C++, C#, SQL, InstallShield and still a little assembler. Web and mobile? Javascript, Java, Perl, PHP, Ruby, C#, ASP, Objective-C plus a few dozen "platforms", "frameworks" and what-not cobbled together with JSON, XML, CSS and various template and scripting syntaxes.
So, you have to learn three platforms to keep up with a line of devices? Boo hoo. Besides, an "app" should be something you can crap out in a month or two - these generally aren't monolithic platforms like Office - even the context-switching-disabled should be OK.
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Don't repeat yourself (Score:2)
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Obvious watch app (Score:1)
Masturbation counter/timer.
The smartest smartwatch is dumb (Score:2)
I think that Samsung and Google are doing it all wrong.
They are still making smartwatches be "companion devices" to smartphones, yet you still have to write custom code to run on the device.
I think that the best type of smartwatch would be one that would act as a dumb terminal to the phone. Let it act as a second screen to the phone with a few button/touch actions plus a few sensors that feed data in the other direction. That would satisfy the most common use cases where a smartwatch would be useful. The ot
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