Samsung Electronics And The Smartphone Industry

In 2014 both Apple and Samsung sold a combined total of about 108.2 million units of their products! Samsung sold about 71 million units while on the other hand Apple sold 94.75 million units. For the past few years, the competing and comparison between Apple and Samsung was at its maximum. Fights started between people to prove an idea about which company is the best but they did not know that they were only comparing their smartphone. That is not the only thing a person should concentrate at while comparing two of the biggest multinationals in the world. People should look at the sales of all of the company’s products, their profits and losses, the history of the company, and the reviews of the people about their

- The smartphone industry is very capital intensive due to high research and development (R&D) costs and expensive manufacturing facilities. This raises the barrier of entry and makes it difficult for small companies to enter. Many of the firms that compete in this industry have existing long-term contractual relationships with mobile carriers and benefit from their significant brand equity. These companies also have a great deal of knowledge and experience through economies of learning, which gives them a major cost advantage over smaller entrants. New entrants will have difficulty getting carriers to adopt their phones because many carriers are already in profitable deals with the large mobile phone manufacturers.

By the end of 2012, Samsung electronics become the largest producer of televisions and mobile phone. In order to achieve the success and the dramatic rise in consumer electronics sector, the company initiated new methods to innovate and create high quality products .

Apple operates with fierce competition in the consumer electronics segment which comes in many different forms. There are a large number of competitors in the different market niches who offer many similar products. Furthermore, many of these competitors' products are priced much less than an Apple branded products. Just as soon as Apple releases a new product, major companies begin imitating it immediately. In the personal computer industry, market pressure is continuously being exerted from such companies such as IBM, Dell, HP, and Toshiba (Wildstrom, 2009). Furthermore, with its flagship product the IPhone, Apple competes with companies like HTC, Palm, Blackberry, and Motorola (Wortham, 2011). Apple has had significant success despite the competitive environment because Apple commands a brand loyalty and dedication to innovation that few companies have ever achieved.

There are many competing brands of smart phones and Samsung has reported a decline of profits in 2014. Information from GSM arena shows than Samsung released 54 new phone models in 2014 , compared with 24 by HTC , 11 Motorola and 2 by Apple, leading to increased production costs and lack focus on a specific customer segments thereby losing some of its competitive advantage (GSM Arena , 2015).The lack of popularity of its own OS (Tizen ) and dependence on Google’s Android platform makes it vulnerable on google to develop an “ecosystem”. There are component integration issues as well as loss revenue from potential App sales (Strategic Mangement insight , 2015). Negative publicity from litigation due to patents are likely to continue as technology patents are vague and Samsung with is large portfolio is likely to infringe on some of the patents (Tibken, 2014).

Samsung is a South Korean company founded in 1938 that produces electronic communication devices of different types. Samsung has been expanding its product variation for a long time constantly increasing its market share value and annual revenues. In fact, it is considered as a classic product-driven brand and one of the largest smartphone manufacturers by unit sales, and that is the product I am especially interested in. Being equipped with a leading Android technology, Samsung smartphones are characterized by high quality, advanced designs and good prices. Moreover, the company offers a good chain of smartphone applications and accessories, as well as other electronic products as laptops, tablets, and netbooks

Samsung products range from mobile devices, TV, audio and video, home appliances, cameras, PC and peripherals and print solutions (Samsung 2014). This essay will predominantly look closely at Samsung’s mobile phones market.

Smartphone market is fast-moving and very high competitive due to intense competition between two big smartphone producers, Apple and Samsung. At the beginning, Apple dominated this market solely by introducing a new innovative type of smartphone by Steve Jobs that has revolutionized people lifestyle and mobile industry. A few years after launching iPhone, a new fast following competitor, Samsung came into this market, and their sales have outperformed Apple from the year 2011 (According to Chart A1 in Appendix). In term of developing their product, Samsung has created its products by following Apple’s technology since the beginning of producing its smartphone, therefore there are many patent lawsuits between them. Since Steve Job passed away, Apple has continued to develop its core competence, which is an innovation of new type of smartphone that could help them to take back their market share from its rival, Samsung. Nonetheless, the competition between Apple and Samsung will still continue intensively in the future.

3. It can be argues that Smartphone are increasingly becoming an everyday necessity in people’s live because of the important functions that they can do and the fact that they are all available in just one handset.

In the modern world of technology, many different companies are attempting to secure their own ground in a particular market. Many companies work in many tech fields & some company focus on software, some on mobile phones, others on television but one of the most recognizable names in the technology field is that of Samsung.

One of the competitive strategies for Apple Inc. lies in its string Sales and Marketing positioning all across the world tough its exclusive Apple stores or in the form of franchise stores. Another competitive advantage of the company lies in its Research & Development capability. This strategy has long been a source of competitive advantage to beat the competitive rivals, both in the domestic market (like Microsoft Windows operating System and Apple’s Macintosh), Google Inc. (Android mobile operating system and Apple’s iOS) s well as in the international competitors like South Korean giant, Samsung and Finnish mobile maker, Nokia Inc. (University of Oregon Investment Group 2012).

In Oligopoly market, few firms share the market power, produce different products with various advertising, has substaintial barriers to entry, and they are interdependent and has the the potential for long run economic profits. In the smartphone market, we know the software installed in phone has very high fixt cost, since software and smartphone are bundled, so it will have high barrier to entry the smartphoen market.Currently in the smartphone oligopoly market, there are some dominant firms like Apple and Samsung.If Samsung comes up new products or new software application, it will affact other firms operating profit or otherwise. This market is very competitive and the market share could change easily. Suppose there is one firm maintian major market share, the firm gains the market power to set higher smartphone price to maximize the profit. Innovation is the key in the market. In order to gain more market power and compete with other firms, those companies pay a lot attention on patent of new inventions. They purchased patents, do patent licensing, or corporated with other technology companies to get the first hand information of technology. Rencently, we can see a lot patent cased brought into the court. As the competition goes firerce, companies realize that they can use the patent laws to prevent other

In the opinion of Baumol and Blinder (2011, p. 235), "monopolistic competition is a market structure characterized by many small firms selling somewhat different products." The authors in this case further note that the output of each entity is small in comparison to the market's aggregate output of competing but closely related products. With that in mind, the mobile phone market exhibits some key characteristics of monopolistic competition. In this market, customers in need of mobile phones are presented with a wide range of options to choose from. For instance, a customer who enters a mobile phone handset shop has the option of purchasing a Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Blackberry or even an LG handset. All these products despite being closely related are also largely differentiated. As Tucker (2010, p. 268) notes, "the key feature of

Company Background: Samsung is a South Korean multinational company those starting its business as a small trading company and right now becoming world largest corporation. The company deals with its business in several sectors such as advance technology, finance, petrochemical, semiconductors, plant construction, skyscraper, medicine, fashion, hotels, chemical and others. The company was established in 1969 in Suwon, South Korea and known globally for its electronic products (Kelly, 2011). The company is manufacturing several latest technologies, electronic appliances such as mobile phones, tablets, laptops, TVs, refrigerators, air conditioners, washers and other products. The company runs its operations and sales its products in 61 countries with approx 160,000 employees in all over the world (SAMSUNG, 2014). Moreover, the company acquired the position of the world biggest IT maker in 2009 by beating the Hewlett-Packard (HP) previous leader. Its sales revenue in the segment of LCD and LED is the highest in the world. Furthermore, Samsung also becomes world leader in the segment of tablets, mobile phones and gadgets.

Today Samsung has evolved into a group of companies unmatched by others in its range of industries and performance. It is now globally focused and responsive to the needs of each market, and more committed than ever to true innovation. The group’s three core business sectors are electronics, finance and trade and services.