From Ben Lovejoy's "Strong iPhone growth in Europe as Samsung sales decline" posted Monday on AppleInsider:
Samsung shipments dipped -7% YoY to 12.0 million units in Europe in Q2 2021. Samsung is performing well with new 5G models from the Galaxy A series, but it faces increasing competition from Apple in the high-end and the Chinese vendors in the low-end, and it has failed to take full advantage of Huawei’s demise in Europe.
Apple posted a strong quarter, growing +16% YoY and shipping an estimated 9.6M iPhones in Europe during Q2 2021. The iPhone 12 range continues to resonate with loyal Apple fans who were overdue to replace their aging 4G models.
My take: Books could be written about what Samsung's smartphones once were and why they aren't anymore. But not by me.
NOTE: AppleInsider is referencing a Strategy Analytics report to which I don't have full access.
Also, the curious practices of annual performance based promotions and rotations of CEO’s amongst the Samsung Electronics divisions really is there to prevent a single individual from becoming smartly in charge, entrenched, IMO successful enough to potentially threaten the overall power of Jay Lee, the eldest son, and his sisters who now control Samsung Electronics and the rest of Samsung. By shuffling CEO’s periodically, each CEO can undo or alter paths set in motion by predecessors while trying to make their own mark on that division. Link that to shifting market preferences, competition, and disparate marketing, hardware, software, and support commitments, all the while trying to protect the bottom line, and you have a highly UN-focused overall direction of hardware makers who have little to no experience or inclination to build software or ecosystem experiences, thereby being dependent on hardware sales, and have little else to monetize – assuming that there’s actually many Samsung users who would spend for Samsung ecosystem products and services.
Recently, articles from Sammobile, a Samsung fan site, suggest Samsung is trying to establish and expand a Samsung-centric ecosystem separate from Android, as usual, trying to copy the success of Apple’s decade old lead in ecosystem building, focus and profitability, let alone enriching users’ lives. And again, as usual, too little and way too late.
As for EU supply availability, surely the sea-bound shipping bottlenecks and imbalances have played a huge role in delaying shipments (the Suez canal blockage didn’t help either). When you hear Cook saying “In terms of the cost, we’re paying more for freight than I would like to pay, but component costs continue in the aggregate to decline”, it suggests Apple is willing and able to pay for more costly expedited shipping (say by air instead of by sea) to keep the supply lines moving and product coming into major markets including the EU.
As Cook notes, he believes current and coming products will be somewhat supply constrained but not demand constrained. For Samsung, having some demand decreases or fade-out after introduction illustrates the frailty of Android product demand, the need for continually giving price discounts and promotions to move inventory and motivate users/buyers, and the price sensitivity of the Android market in general, similar with Tablets, Watches, and the accessories.
At 19.2% MS, there’s plenty of room to grow, which they are doing. And each new-to-iPhone sale means other Apple products and services over time.
Apple’s growth at the expense of Samsung validates once again that Apple-late-to-market (in this case with 5G) costs Apple (and us investors) nothing.
Sorry Meg V., at 19.2% share, they’re no monopoly.
“low end of the market Apple addresses with refurbushed phones.”
Yep. That’s why installed base is a far better metric than market share. So when you see market share sliding, its a fair bet that installed bases is free-falling towards Apple.
This isn’t accidental. Apple has worked diligently to create a massive production capacity for high quality devices, far outstripping its competitors on that front. Those devices, their constantly updated and secure software, and the support structure keeping both functional for years, means Apple products far outlast the vast majority of the competition.
Advantage, Apple.
So we’ll see Android ‘fork’ into likely 3 groups: (1) Google; (2) Samsung; (3) the bottom-feeders 🙂 And Samsung will continue to get pinched between #1 and #3.
“Does Google’s entry into phone silicon spell the end of the ‘single Android world’?”
The problem for Alphabet is that they can’t escape the tar pit of their origin. Sure, they can copy elements of Apple, but Apple didn’t rest on their laurels like Alphabet did for way too many years. Imagine trying to match Apple’s incredible capacity to produce high quality products across the board with high quality vetted software and a world wide top-notch support structure. And it’s not their core business anyway, like it is for Apple.
Good luck with that….
The real question is whether or not Google is going to commit to even moderate production volumes if they are going to place the 6/6 Pro into “premium” categories like $900-1000 price range rather than the current 5/5a’s midrange position. Considering Google has literally only sold AT BEST, 8M units per annum in 2019, and maybe 5M in 2020, and typically <4-5M units before that (all told, <0.5% market share), their ROI is pretty dismal from a hardware perspective. I really can't see them doing anything but subsidizing hardware and chip development from a short or long term perspective given the low sales / production volumes we are seeing. As I mentioned in a previous post, IMO, the high end Android market is either stable or shrinking, and competition there is Samsung, but undermined by lower cost, higher value Chinese makers like Xiaomi, BBK (OnePlus/Oppo/Vivo) and formerly Huawei.
Frankly, when you sell only 8-12M projected smartphones in one year, how do you have any pricing power on components when selling in such small numbers – that is the reason for the demise (so far) of the ultra-Flagship Samsung Note series, not selling more than 10M units either/year over the last 2 years. Ego boosts for Samsung and Google, but certainly not much of a revenue generator when costs are figured in. And then there's Google's penchant for shutting down smaller hardware projects if they don't pan out or Google just decides to walk away from them, so much for support.
I'm sure Google wants to point the way as how Android with optimized hardware can be wonderful and all, but Google probably still doesn't want to upset or majorly compete with its own Android customers, hence despite expressed confidence in itself, the reality will be in the marketplace of consumer opinion and buying/not buying. Did I also mention that the newest Pixels will only be marketed in 8 major markets – USA, Canada, Australia, UK, France, Germany, Japan, and Taiwan, basically where Android fans can afford it. So much for an expanded Google Pixel market footprint.
Being the leading “fast copier” blunts a Company’s vision. You’ll never be anything but a #2, with #3, #4, #5, etc constantly yapping at your heels, and sometimes overtaking you in the race to the bottom.
“Being the leading “fast copier” blunts a Company’s vision.”
You nailed it. Apple has often been accused of “copying”, but way to often it just looks that way because some competitor came out first with a product that was rushed to market while Apple took the tlme to build it right. The Apple Watch is a prime example (although it’s always amazed me that people forget about the iPod Nano you could – and I did – wear on your wrist).
The reality is that Apple was and still is a trail-blazer. And you can’t be a trail-blazer if all you ever do is follow where someone else has already gone.
For a long time, though, I kept on looking for true innovation, something that would make me say “Gee, I wish my iPhone had that!” The short-lived Samsung ‘secure enclave’ was one of very few things on the Android side that I thought would be useful in iOS. The other is the ability to provide external storage for at least some forms of content (e.g. flash memory external drive to hold more music or photos than the phone would hold). The argument “it’s all in the cloud” has never been persuasive to me.
As for Tizen as an alternative to Google Android, Samsung is primarily a hardware company through and through, so software was strictly a sideline for them even when a need was identified and even supported – they just aren’t terribly good at software development till recently, see Samsung’s notoriously slow Android security and OS updates till 2020. As I said many times on Samsung/Android sites, “why the hell do you put up with slow, late, incomplete, and tortuous OS updates, let alone the restricted 2-3 years tops Android OS update support policies of Android and makers alike, if even that?” They never have an answer other than “oh, that’s just the way it is”, “I’ll just buy another phone in 2-3 years to get the latest OS”, and the best one “OS updates are highly overrated, don’t need them” – fatalism at its best, never will they (although the Android sites do) acknowledge Apple’s leadership in 5-6+ year after purchase support and ability to write software improvements and changes, plus rapid adoption of latest iOS that Android can only have wet dreams about.