Samsung posts record profits as Galaxy sales crush Apple Booming mobile sales have powered record profits at Samsung in Q3. Samsung published a preliminary statement of their financials yesterday [PDF] which shows a 91 per cent increase in net profit compared to the same three months last year. The South Korean firm drew in 6.56 trillion won profit ($5.9bn or £3.7bn) in the three …
That, of course, is irrelevant because what are you going to do if you get fed up with Google? Honestly, I'm sick to death with non-developers masquerading as computer geeks. You give yourselves away everytime by over emphasizing the hardware (which is largely irrelevant) and undervaluing the software (which is everything).
Frankly, I couldn't give a monkeys about the hardware - and not too much of a monkeys about the OS - as long as I can easily port my software from one platform (that means OS, newbies) to another.
"Frankly, I couldn't give a monkeys about the hardware - and not too much of a monkeys about the OS - as long as I can easily port my software from one platform (that means OS, newbies) to another."
So the fart apps are easy to port are they ?
Really balanced view of technology there - I am a developer, therefore software is EVERYTHING !
Grow up ! It is a symbiotic relationship software/hardware - either is useless without the other.
Of course it's symbiotic, but the hardware is the shiny shiny thing that all the newbs can cream themselves over. The software is just the intangible thing that the world and his wife seeks to rip off or pirate. Truth is though that it is software that turns a computer from being a paperweight into the ultimate Swiss Army knife. And it is the software that is the most expensive part of the set up (and therefore the part who's portability should be valued)
Taking my setup, the software cost is more many thousands of pounds more than the hardware - even ignoring the stuff that I wrote. So I'm more likely to be pissed off if I have to change software platform than hardware platform.
As to the ease of porting a fart app, yes - very easy. But I grew past the hello world phase about thirty years ago, so that's not really my bag anymore. Don't worry - if you work very hard, you might grow out of that too.
Still, I'm getting a clear sense of how many newbies are posting replies to this infantile article. I guess you fancy yourselves bofh, yes?
Wow Mr. Blowhard way to get off topic. You better accept jackwagon that your customers can switch phones and or OSs anytime they want. Don't like having to worry about hardware differences than write for IOS. You sounds like a real jack ass. Please post what your app is so I and everyone I know can avoid ever giving you damn dime.
No apps for iOS. I've never developed for iOS. And why would I want you to give me bad publicity? Not everyone is as stupid as you are. If you're really interested though, I've been working on network analysis software for Linux and Windows. No, I won't tell you what it's called.
My point was, and I'll try to keep the words short, that they should be able to switch easily - but that its the software that creates the lock in - not the hardware. Whether a user uses Samsung or HTC matters not a jot because, ultimately, they're on the same platform (Android). It's when they switch to iOS, Blackberry or Windows that they'll have the problem.
The intelligence delta between you and the rest of the world, including the other people who post on here, isn't as big as you think it is - it really isn't the case that you are as clever as you think you are.
You also seem quite stressed and that's bad for your health. You might want to think about coping strategies that will help you relax.
"My point was, and I'll try to keep the words short, that they should be able to switch easily - but that its the software that creates the lock in - not the hardware. Whether a user uses Samsung or HTC matters not a jot because, ultimately, they're on the same platform (Android). It's when they switch to iOS, Blackberry or Windows that they'll have the problem." - 45RPM
I read all of that just for you to state the obvious... what a let down. Maybe you are so hyper intelligent i am missing the point, doubtful though.
>what are you going to do if you get fed up with Google?
Umm fork the source code (its open after all for at least the galaxy nexus) and remove the annoying parts and make it do what you want. Isn't that what developers do? (of course I know its not trivial but this guy was such an ass had to point out the obvious).
This post has been deleted by its author
Somewhat ot, but, on the angle of being fed up with google
When Koreans and sympathetic devs get pissed at googlen or renaming Dokdo with liancourt rocks on non-Korean web searches and non-Korean installs of google earth and google maps, Samsung and Hancom might fork android.
I think thenday could come that Samsung and Korea do to google what apple did to Samsung... It is as if google felt a need to retaliate against Korea for Korea hosting a privacy rights forum in which google was blasted for worsening privacy rights globally.
Down mod me all you want, but, it may be where things are headed for all involved.
I up-voted you.
I would be surprised if Samsung haven't already got their own version of Android in-house. They have Bada which is Linux, right? and they sell millions of phones with Bada. It's not a stretch to believe they will outgrow the usefulness of or need for Google in the mobile space.
As for Google's "worsening privacy rights globally", you are dead right. Their strategy is to eliminate privacy rights by breaching privacy laws on a scale so grand as to render privacy laws ineffective - and act accordingly. This, I posit, is EVIL in essence.
... forking being all well and good, there is however one aspect of Google lock-in that I am not happy with -- the Play Store. Too many apps are using DRM meaning Google Play Store is required to install them on another device. I think this is a serious issue when needs highlighted more often in the Android community.
The reason you got downvotes is not because what you said wasn't true, but because the typical register readers are aging sys admins and other such 'non-developers masquerading as computer geeks'.
A tool is a tool is a tool, but it is nice not having to spend a fortune in money or time getting all your apps on your next device. That goes for computers as well as phones.
Hasn't Samsung always been more successful than Apple? Per the Internet Samsung usurped HP to become the number one technology company when measuring by sales back in 2009.
I think the story is more interesting in terms of trends — Apple's numbers appear more or less stagnant (albeit quite healthy) while Samsung's are growing quickly.
I'm sorry, Apple's numbers are stagnant? Profits and revenue up by 25% from the same period last year is 'stagnant' now? Did the definition of the word change some time recently?
(Note: Samsung's numbers ARE better and well done to them for it but the idea Apple's profits are stagnant is noodle-doodle. Apple is still growing but Samsung is apparently growing faster, which speaks of just how big an achievement their results actually are).
Let's say in the next quarter, RIM leaps from 4 million to 25 million smartphones. That is still lower than Apple's 27 million smartphones. So who is winning? Obviously RIM, because what counts is the trend. RIM is now the guy to watch out for, even if it sold less than Apple in absolute numbers (25 million versus 27 million).
What about the REAL world? In the past 1.5 years, Apple went from 15 million to 27 million, and Samsung went from 8 million to 57 million. Do you see what is happening? Capiche?
Of the 57 million Samsung phones, perhaps 40% are quality smartphones, or about 23 million. That would still be short of Apple's 27 million, but again it's the trend that counts.
Of course he is. No British person complains about copying ideas because the UK sold off all its businesses and now only does banking or reality TV.
That's why the gov fights any sort of regulation or fees for banking. Everything including cadbury's has been sold off so we must let the bankers continue to act like crooks to keep the economy afloat. It's easier than making things and innovating.
But, but the still made the Raspberry Pi! That's innovation, right?
Or maybe just out of ease of setting up non-profit charities over here, which is much harder to do in the US.
Another UK business feature that gives us so much choice (over 185,000 in 2010) like proposing to saving some donkeys in India - but still allowing their staff to be paid millions in expenses. Tax free.
Technology and Innovation? Where?
Operating system: Made by Google, not Samsung
Form factor and UX: Depends on who you ask, but definitely not developed by Samsung
"Innovative" features like S Voice or the home button: Stolen from Apple
Larger screens are not innovations, we've had them for ages.
Where Samsung tries their own technology (Bada) it fails miserably, so the takeaway message is you can make a ton more money by not doing any R&D of your own and just take others's work.
Actually that reminds me of some people I knew at Uni....
"Tried Googling for it but couldn't find any, but it sounds like you have a very solid idea... so let's have them."
Funny, I tried googling it (took about 10 secs) and on Samsung's US page it details that each year Samsung Electronics invests ~9% of revenue back into R&D
http://www.samsung.com/us/aboutsamsung/ourbusinesses/researchdevelopment.html
Samsung have also invested 822 million USD in a new R&D centre in Seoul (that's the site development cost, not even including the actual "research").
And apple's R&D investment as percentage of sales is hitting new lows. (Just over 2% in 2011).
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20121322-37/apple-r-d-as-percent-of-revenue-hits-a-low/
This appears to coincide with Apple's penchant for litigation against pretty much everyone.
So although we don't have figures, we can see who's more comitted to R&D - it's ironic that the company that puts the least percentage of sales back into R&D is the one trying to get away with suing everyone else.
Also, considering Samsung Electronics have (up until recently) made a large portion of the electronics that go into Apple's gadgets, I'd say trying to rubbish Sammy's R&D is a fairly good example of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
So Apple make their own OS, whilst Samsung make their own hardware like CPUs and displays.
Samsung use someone else for the OS, but then, Apple use someone else (Samsung) for their hardware like CPUs and display.
Sorry, it's ridiculous to say that Samsung don't innovate or make technology. And even for the OS, Apple bought OS X from NEXT, and IOS is built on Darwin. Meanwhile, Samsung do build their own highly successful TouchWiz OS on Android.
So both Apple and Samsung build an OS on top of other people's work, whilst Samsung make the hardware for both themselves and Apple.
Apple copied form factor and UX from others just as much as Samsung. Google and Nokia were doing voice recognition on phones years before Apple (and wasn't S Voice itself a 3rd party thing they bought out?)
You're right that larger screens aren't an innovation, which is why an ipad is nothing new. Bada still sold more than the iphone in the same timeframe since release, so I guess the iphone failed miserable too. Also don't forget Samsung's "feature" smartphones, which they sell tens of millions of, on *top* of the Android smartphones which outself Apple two to one.
I first heard of Samsung sometime around 1992, as maker of licensed copies of HP's RISC workstations (the 9000/715 IIRC). To date I can't think of a Samsung product that was particularly original. So what? They are a ,manufacturer of mainstream electronic products, and do a pretty good job of making reasonably durable electronics at attactive price points.
The endless arguments about copying are really pretty silly when it comes to mainstream products, which almost by definition incorporate the features that most consumers expect to have. A truly innovative company will keep on coming out with products based on new ideas (the definition of innovation) and stay ahead of the pack - so has nothing to fear from mainstream.
And if you compare Samsung's devices to the real iThing clones it's easy to see there is no intentional copying by Samsung, it's just that ideas that have made it into the mainstream customer's set of expectations are incorporated into their designs (just like any other mainstream manufacturer). If cloning the iThing was their goal they would have gone the whole hog and made their products indistinguishable.
Ultimately the relative market shares of Apple and Samsung reflect their chosen roles, luxury brand and mainstream. Long may Apple innovate (though the iPad mini is very 'meh') and long may Samsung (and others) popularise.
Disclaimer: I own neither Apple not Samsung kit (or shares). Appreciate Apple's design & attention to detail, detest the so-superior attitude, see no point gadgets that don't make the lights dip when you turn them on.
Indeed. Have you noticed how just about all modern cars look very similar except for a few barges at one end and a few quirk micro-cars at the other?
Aerodynamics, safety, road conditions and the need for a driver to move safely from one model to another force a great deal of similarity. All the innovation is in hidden things like the Toyota hybrid transmission, the Fiat hydraulic valve actuators, or dual clutch automated gearboxes.
The fact that Apple is litigating about things that car manufacturers ignore suggests a deficit of real R&D on their part. I don't remember Apple inventing capacitative touch screens, OLEDS, fractal antennae, lithium batteries, CNC mills, reinforced glasses or POSIX. The unique Apple contribution to the iPhone is probably no more than a couple of percent of what makes a mobile phone work.
That is why the court battles are so bitter, just as the American and English Civil Wars were fought between people who were very similar.
"look very similar" is not the same as (a) essentially indistinguishable or (b) identical.
The Chinese (the head of the "copyist" franchise) auto industry is busily making cars that are both (a) and (b) and there is a not so quiet storm brewing about.
Each can have his/her own view, but there are an enormous number of elements in the original Samsung Galaxy range compared to the Apple products - for obvious reasons fewer now. The court cases serve to define exactly where the line is drawn between "similar" and a copy. For the generally clueless IT crowd it looks like the end of the world, however this sort of thing is litigated constantly. The Apple-Samsung cases are just interesting for us in IT because we live in that world. The cases are by no means unique.
This post has been deleted by its author
Generally, if someone I know has a Samsung TV, phone, microwave or anything else, I am oblivious to it. If someone I know has an Apple device, I am made aware of it on a regular basis.
I've never witnessed Samsung users parading their devices (I'm sure there are some though), it's just a *thing*. I don't think they care as much about being different, it's a different ethos.
quote - Generally, if someone I know has a Samsung TV, phone, microwave or anything else, I am oblivious to it. If someone I know has an Apple device, I am made aware of it on a regular basis.
Question - There are 20 people in a room, one of them has an iPhone 5, how can you tell who it is?
Answer - You don't need to work it out, it won't be long before they tell you!
You can do whatthefuckever you want, troll. I am already using contractless service (which rocks, BTW) and when shopping for a phone to buy for this service I did look at Apple's cute little i-thingy phones, but their pricing was absurdly outrageous for the features. For the price I paid for my Galaxy Nexus I could have gotten a 3 generation old iPhone 3. An iPhone 4S (newest gen when I was phone shopping earlier this year) was double the cost of the Nexus. And I don't count myself as an Android or Samsung fanboy, but the Nexus gave me the best value for features versus price. So go ahead and take a high hard one up the old poot chute from Apple and the phone companies when you buy your latest i-Gadget on a new contract with a ripoff telco or just confine yourself to just getting screwed by Apple if you want to just buy an iPhone 5 outright.
So go ahead and take a high hard one up the old poot chute from Apple and the phone companies when you buy your latest i-Gadget on a new contract with a ripoff telco or just confine yourself to just getting screwed by Apple if you want to just buy an iPhone 5 outright.
I don't equate spending a little extra money to get the phone I want to getting fucked in the ass. If that's what you would have had to do to make enough money for the iphone, hey, I'm not judging you.
after 6+ years with a cheap Samsung - Verizon flip phone I didn't even text with .. and needing a better camera than an equally old 5MP Kodak .. and needing a video recorder for an event filled weekend ...
got a Galaxy SIII (Verizon) 2 weeks ago .. this thing is really cool and much more impressive than that old boxy design of Apple's
Apple are about as strong as they always were and windows mobile might be good enough to get a few percent more market share than earlier versions (though it could just as easily sink without trace).
On the other hand RIM have imploded which leaves android and ios as the only serious games in town. Meanwhile htc are struggling so badly I might not replace my trusty desire s with a new model even though I love Sense and Samsung have really become the defacto Android smartphone.
That looks like less competition to me.
I agree. Also the loss of Symbian, number one OS in 2011, but then ditched by Nokia. So we've gone from Symbian and Android as dominant platforms, with Blackberry and Iphone as less popular alternatives, to Android as the dominant platform and only Iphone as a less popular alternative.
I'm glad that something like Android and not Iphone turned out to be the successful platform, but it's a bit disappointing the lack of choice if the only alternative is Apple. I'm not WP fan, but I hope its share increases to provide some choice and competition!
And yes, it's bizarre that whilst it seemed Android would provide an OS to any company wanting to make phones, in practice we've seen less hardware choice - first Motorola losing share, now HTC.
@AC16:30
So samsung managed to eat up HTC's customers by making iphone clones.
More like: HTC managed to throw away a lot of customer loyalty by no longer supporting removable memory cards and user-replaceable batteries, so Samsung (and other Android vendors) got some extra customers for very little effort.
Pity, I liked my old HTC phone, but the One S I considered replacing it with turned out not to have the features I most wanted.
Personally I think HTC let themselves down, with too large a range of phone models which mostly keep missing the mark (omg put in a good camera ffs).
Then they did the deal with the devil instead of innovating/engineering/fighting themselves out of it.
Then the kick in the balls from the cash flow loss.
Dunno if the new strategy will work, but right now when I'm on the tube in TW, I mostly see people using iPhones and Sammys, especially the Note <- not hard to miss xD
Good cameras in phones cost real money.
Have a look at the BOM for a Nokia N8 (the last major Symbian smart phone) and see where the money went in producing it. Engineering a smartphone is about trade offs, and HTC made theirs, as did Nokia. The Nokia's have better camera technology installed, always have had and they can do this because Symbian is a very efficient OS and they can save money on the CPU generation required to power the whole thing. Trade-offs and trad-offs.
I was wondering how big Samsung had to get before people started slagging them off the same way we do Apple - and now I know!!
Samsung phones dont chain you to the suppliers infrastructure, so even if the phones werent quite as good, I would still buy one over an Apple.
BTW I dont own a smart phone at all, although my toughphone IS a Samsung, as is my washing machine and one of my TVs.
After trashing Apple in the sales figures again, should they be called Samsmug??
After all, Apple's worked hard these past two years, spending millions on lawyers and courts, just to get everyone noticing and talking about Samsung's phones. And in the past two years, my how Samsung's market share has grown!
Sure, Samsung's had to cough up its share for lawyers and court expenses too, but the extra publicity has brought in much, much more cash than has been spent!
Really, the very least Samsung could do is send Apple a bouquet, or maybe a nice fruit basket with a sincere thank-you note.
Oh, BTW Apple, ever heard of the 'Streisand Effect'?
{ tis beer o'clock over this side o the pond ladies and gents }
Lets get the mudslingers lined up in a co-ordinated fashion, either side of the pile of shattered and broken flip phones, Nokia, Motos, Ericssons etc.
Sheeples on the left please,
Shamples on the right.
(now that we've got the naming convention straight)
Okay --- please load up the vituperative commentary, keep your notes neat (I'll imaging that would be Notes2 on the right there)
Deep breath,
SLING!!!
('scuse us working stiffs, we'll all line up at the bar for a scotch and a beer or three)
Or do what most people do and plug it in when you are at your desk or carry one of those USB power packs that can charge any of your devices.
I'm surprised the standard battery is not man enough anyway - I'm sure some people use them even more than I do but it's been a long time since I was able to deplete a full battery from 7am to 10pm the same day - suppose if you use personal hotspot all the time and have GPS running it would munch through it pretty quickly but I use my phone (what I would consider) a lot and typically I have 20-40% left by bed.
Well, I suppose that carpet bombing stylee marketing worked- they've had massive stands in the soulless megamall near work for ages now, with various machines for punters to tinker with, and ads bloody everywhere. That's before we consider the bazillions spent being splattered all over the Olympics- that can't have come cheap.
Anyway, it's good to see someone else making out like bandits, given what wankers Apple have been of late. They should learn from HTC's mistakes and not flood their own market with too many poorly-differentiated models, mind.
(Also, why did my unlocked S3 get its Jellybean after the bloody networks, eh? You bastids :D Mer mer mer!)
Twisting mathematics, twisting numbers to make it look like people are in a rush buying Android tablets by Samsung is really pathetic.
So now we can expect Microsoft claiming that they will have got 90% of market share with the atrocious Windows8 tablets and Apple couldn't sell any iPad because "everyone loves Metro, everyone wants Metro/ModernUI" crap nonsense that Microsoft marketing machine is coming up with these days.
You wonder who lies the most.. if Google and Samsung with Android or if Microsoft with the Windows8 Metro crap.
By these fake statistics and claims one would think that iPad is not wanted anymore.
Twisting reality is a dangerous thing to do.. the arrogance of Samsung+Google and Microsoft is going to backfire them really bad sooner than later.
Is this really surprising?
Apple have fairly much pointed them out in a room full of android alternatives and gone "they at too good and a threat to Apple". People look and have liked what they saw.
I have always liked Samsung products. Good for them.
I just hope they are more wise with their money than Apple have. What a waste the last year on litigation has been. Sitting in the UK where the courts have decided that Apple is just throwing its toys out of the pram at having competition. Seems strange that only the USA and Germany have sided with Apple.
Also be it Apple or Samsung, all the devices come from China. People get it through your heads, the west consume, the East produce the products. They are all produces of Asia.
By the way I own an iPhone and iPad. By have recently bought a Nexus 7 and like it more than the iPad. Really looking forward to the Nexus 10.
People underestimate Apple - the iPad is 'massive' and the iPad Mini will just cement that position. They are the devices people 'actually' use - several articles on here have said that they are responsible for something like 90% of the tablet web browsing (a pretty decent indicator) and that Apple users actually use / buy more apps.
Android is going after the high volume but apart from the tech-heads most people 'want' an iPhone / iPad. I've even seen several people refer to their clone tablets as iPads <lol> - bit like those people who buy a lower model BMW and stick a M3 badge on it.
What a silly article.... how much did Samsung make from phone sales? Samsung didn't report that.
For all we know they sold a lot of phones and yet most of their profit came from TVs. Who knows?
As of Q3 2012 Apple made 70% of all handset profits worldwide. Even BlackBerry still sells more phones that Apple but they make nothing compared to Apple. Samsung even selling twice as many phones probably still makes far less that Apple.
Hell, HP has to sell 7 PCs to equal the profit Apple makes from one Mac.
True, they may have a smaller profit margin, per unit sold, however even if they make less money, putting a Samsung in someones hand, means they don't buy an Apple (cutting Apples profit from that person), and in the future, may choose to stay Samsung/dung whatever your opinion, meaning in the long term they may overtake Apple using this tactic, if they successfully arm more customers with any device from the Android/Samsung product line.
I work with hardcore tecchies who choose Apple for everything - they buy a phone to be a phone and it does - I truly believe nowadays if you buy either you'll enjoy it and stick with that choice. They bought Apple initially and they love it. In fact we've suffered detriments to our working relationship over me arguing the toss for Samsung, and them defending Apple.....the excitement in my job, lol. - personally I find it funny that people can get personally offended over their choice for an electronics device.
.......The reasons Samsung are doing well are:
1) They make BLOODY GOOD kit (Phones, Laptops and TVs)
2) Most of their phones have user removeable/replaceable batteries
3) Most of their phones have replaceable (ie: upgradeable) MicroSD card slots
4) They use industry standard MicroUSB connectors on their latest smartphones.
5) They use standard-sized SIMs
The last four being very good reasons why I will NOT buy an iPhone.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
