How Apple’s Business Model Burned Samsung

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Apple’s entering the phablet space with a premium competitor is going to have a major impact on Samsung’s fortunes. Samsung has already shown a serious loss in profits from their smartphone business last quarter and have already hinted to the street this quarter will be negative as well. We estimate Apple will sell around 63 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models in Q4 and if you add the sales of iPhone 5′s to the mix that are still selling well in certain countries, they could sell around 70 million iPhones during the holiday quarter. If this is true, imagine how it will negatively impact Samsung during this same time period.

In an article in the Korea Times last week, they point out Samsung is seeing the handwriting on the wall for their premium business. The article says:

To ride on the market changes, Samsung is paying more attention to the low end smartphone segment to entice more clients in populous emerging markets, including India.

I don’t expect Samsung or any of the Android smartphone vendors to actually get out of the phablet business. However, the Android vendors who until September had this market all to themselves now have to deal with Apple, a ferocious competitor. Given the cycle of cell phone contracts, I suspect demand for the iPhone 6 will be at record numbers well through most of 2015 and this will continue to contribute to Samsung’s woes, at least with their premium models.

Mehr als 1,25 Milliarden Smartphones werden im Jahr 2014 verkauft, so die Prognose von Statista. Und nur einer der Player im Markt verdient damit Geld. Man kann darauf warten, bis die ersten Player den Markt verlassen werden, sofern sie keine gewinnbringenden Geschäftsmodelle für die Nutzungszeit nach dem Kauf entwickeln. Die bisherigen Versuche  – beispielsweise mit eigenen App-Stores – waren zaghaft und nicht von Erfolg gekrönt. Hier hat sich Google inzwischen eingenistet. Es wird eng.