

Samsung swipes 95 percent of total industry profits earned from Android phones - bane
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/samsung-collected-95-percent-of-q1-2013-android-profits/

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hkmurakami
Coupled with the recent news of Samsung "buying" popular apps (at least one
thus far) to be available only on Samsung phones, this is really bad news for
Google as they lose control to Samsung.

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gurkendoktor
Speaking of Google... Why do you think they still chose the S4 as the next
Nexus model? Appeasement? Hope that people accidentally buy a Nexus S4 instead
of a TouchWiz S4? Intuitively, it doesn't seem to make sense for either
company.

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artsrc
I would prefer a Nexus software S4 to a Samsung software S4.

I can't see any significant way that it is worse for Google for people to have
their software rather than Samsung's.

Although neither S4 justifies the price jump from a cheap Nexus 4 for me.

And assuming some people want a high end "Nexus Experience" phone, Samsung
gets more customers this way, than if Google went with HTC.

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gurkendoktor
Sorry, I was taking it as a given that a new Nexus phone would be announced.
So my question was more along the lines of: Why would Google choose Samsung
and not support HTC, Asus, LG or its own Motorola instead?

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Zigurd
The chances of Samsung either making an alternative ecosystem for Android,
like Amazon did, or a replacement OS that actually replaces more than 1% of
their Android unit volume within three years are about nil.

Samsung takes all the profits because they have both vertical integration and
scale. That's the same thing they did to the PC business, except Intel keeps
the CPU profit.

I don't know what Google can do about that, or, for that matter, why they
should do anything about it at all. Where is the rush of OEMs to Windows
Phone? Nobody is offering a better technology at a better price than Google.

I hope there are more viable mobile OSs to help prevent stagnation. But I
don't see any of the current crop of contenders knocking anyone out.

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laumars
_> The chances of Samsung either making an alternative ecosystem for Android,
like Amazon did, or a replacement OS that actually replaces more than 1% of
their Android unit volume within three years are about nil._

I wouldn't be so quick to jump to conclusions as Samsung already have a
replacement OS called 'Tizen'. It's already themed like TouchWiz (Samsung's
bastardization of Android) and it already supports Android apps. What's more,
Tizen handsets are set to hit the shelves this year[1].

[1]
[http://www.osnews.com/story/26865/Samsung_s_future_is_Tizen_...](http://www.osnews.com/story/26865/Samsung_s_future_is_Tizen_not_Android)

~~~
mcintyre1994
I'm sure they'd like to do this, and it'd be interesting to see. I still think
they'd hit an ecosystem problem even if they can run Android apps though,
namely that Google won't give them their apps in Tizen's store. They'd be able
to sideload them presumably, and there's plenty of Google Apps packages around
the internet, but most consumers wouldn't. Google are killing it software wise
on Android and iOS, and it's increasingly looking like an OS without first
class Google, not Android, support, is going to suffer.

~~~
laumars
I doubt Samsung could side-load Google apps from a legal perspective. From
what I understand, YouTube et al isn't free. You have to be a member of
Google's Android license or something; and that's on the condition that the
OEMs conform to various compatibility and UI standards within Android. Sorry
for the lack of precision there, I forget the exact details of te agreements
OEMs have with Android. But the crux of the matter is if Samsung switch to
Tizen, Google could easily block their access to Google's Android apps.

As to whether consumers would ever make the switch to Tizen: I'd imagine some
might without realising it - not everyone is tech-savvy about these things.
But I wouldn't like to comment on the masses. I've tried to predict popular
trends before and have been wrong and given how fickle the smartphone market
is, I really wouldn't like to make any future predictions just yet.

My point was just that Samsung are, at best, attempting to supplement their
Android market, or at worst, trying to replace Android entirely. And that
they've already reached the point where they're ready to put their competing
OS to market.

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mcintyre1994
Sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant solely from a technical
perspective, my anecdote being that I use Android on my HP Touchpad and had no
problem finding Google Apps to install, and they work great. Legally though, I
think you're right that Samsung couldn't provide them, so they wouldn't be
available to the average consumer.

I do agree with you though that we can't really predict future trends, and I
guess Samsung are really uniquely positioned as producers of mass market big
selling Android products to know what works in Android and what doesn't.

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colomon
It seems to me that the use of the word "swipes" in the headline (which comes
from the article, mind you) is utterly unjustified by the article. It implies
there is a fixed Android market share which Samsung somehow took. And it
suggests they did something unethical to get it.

