Apple vs Samsung: Change of Perception

Big technology companies today have shifted the way we live and work everyday. For example, think what it would have been like if you were still using your old feature phone which had around a total of 12 buttons on its keypad. Compared to that, you probably have a phone which has an infinite number of buttons in theory. This is all thanks to big multinational companies such as Apple that created the smarter version of the smart phone. Soon to follow were companies such as Samsung and HTC running the operating system developed by Google. At the time of writing this article, there are two major mobile platforms, which are iOS and Android. While there are two minor platforms, which includes Windows Phone and Blackberry OS. There are also other platforms, however, they are nowhere as popular as the top four. The market has not seen so much competition in the mobile space until now where every company wants to make phones and make a fortune out of it. However, two companies stand out of the pack. Samsung and Apple. These two companies control over 50% of the world’s phone market together and they are taking in all the profits leaving little money for the other OEMs. Samsung, Apple, Google are the top three mobile companies in the market now.

Android is one of Google’s most successful projects. Having acquired it in 2004, it was developed and brought to market by 2008. Android has now passed the 70% market share and has over 900 million devices in its league. With Google becoming the owner of Android allowed it to advance incredibly faster compared to being developed by a small company. This is because Google’s resources in employees, infrastructure and ultimately money which is greater than Android Inc had when it started. Android’s success is said to be because it was developed and supported by Google. Before the release of Android, Google created an Open Handset Alliance with many multinational companies such as Samsung, HTC, ARM, Verizon Wireless and many others to support the Android ecosystem with the mission to have everyone in the world connected to the internet. The Alliance has allowed Android to expand to all the markets very quickly and growing exponentially everyday. This is because the supporters such as Samsung create phones which everyone can afford and resulting in very strong sales. Also because the Android operating system is on all of these phones has allowed Android to grow very fast as well. Another positive point for Android is that it has an open system which means anyone can use the system. This allows the system to run on pretty much any device that meets the Android requirements. For this reason Android is now the world’s most popular operating system and is in front by an extremely large percentage. Even though Android is a free system, Google makes profits from the sides of Android such as the Play Store. However, because these services have not yet made large profits for Google, it does not focus much on profits from its Android division. Apple however seems to be seeing profits made from its iTunes store.

Apple is the first company that developed the smarter version of a smartphone both on the software and hardware level. The release of iPhone instantly made Apple Inc (formerly known as Apple Computers before the iPhone launch) extremely popular as no other mobile manufacturer was near the level of Apple’s smartphone ecosystem. On the release of the first iPhone, Steve Jobs stated that the iPhone was 5 years ahead of any other smartphone which turned out to be true. Firstly, the iPhone had a full screen LCD which made the hardware keyboards obsolete as the keyboard became a virtual in the LCD. This allowed Apple to create a customisable keyboard for developers meaning that if the developer only needed numbers on the keyboard, the user would only see the numbers. Also on the topic of display, Apple was the first at incorporating a multi-touch capacitive touchscreen compared to the older models such as resistive touchscreens. iOS which was released as the operating system running the iPhone was a stripped down version of the OSX operating system which runs the Macintosh line of Apple’s computers. The phone’s processing power and the software attached to it made it the ultimate phone of 2007 until early 2011. In this 4 years, Apple had practically no competition which allowed it to sell as many iPhones possible without much effort. All Android and Windows phones were very limited compared the iPhone and ultimately its operating software. Windows Phone and Android were not in Par with the iOS as none had a release as fluid and optimized as iOS. However, with Android’s Jelly Bean release in 2012 completely changed Android’s course as it optimized the whole Android system as it introduced Project Butter which made it extremely smooth and fluid. At this stage Apple actually had to compete with the Android ecosystem which had much greater user base and became as stable and smooth as iOS. Also the phones that were operating under the Android system had become much more superior compared to the iPhone. For example, the Samsung Galaxy SII had a dual core CPU while the iPhone had a single core. From this point forward, Samsung quickly built up popularity and most importantly its market share.

Samsung is currently the world’s largest mobile manufacturer producing over 70 million handsets just in the last quarter (Q2 of 2013). This makes it the largest producer and the most profitable in its mobile division allowing Samsung to produce 30% of the world’s smartphones. This means that nearly a third of the smartphone population have a Samsung smartphone. Samsung released its first Android powered phone in the June of 2009 called the Galaxy. This was the first step Samsung took in the development of Android powered phones. Even though not many were sold in developed countries such as USA and UK, it placed its focus on emerging markets such as the Asian countries. This gave enough profit for it continue development of Android powered phones. Samsung’s first impact on the developed countries came with the release of the Samsung Galaxy SII. It was thinner than most phones while having a higher specification and Samsung’s own LCD display which made colors look very exciting because of its color over-saturation. With the release of the Galaxy SII, Apple became a reachable opponent for Samsung. Although, Samsung’s success story comes from other factors as well. Because of Samsung’s back-end manufacturing of components such as CPU, LCD, memory etc allowed it to use its own component’s in its devices. This allowed
the cost of production to drop which resulted in the end product to have a lower cost compared to other company’s devices. For example, the Samsung Galaxy SIII had Samsung’s own quad core CPU (except for the US), super AMOLED LCD, RAM and flash memory. Also, because Samsung also sells its components as well, results in the component division to not see expense, but profit. The Samsung Galaxy SIII was the first phone to out-do Apple’s iPhone. The Galaxy SIII was considered as the phone of the year with much more innovation packed in compared to other phones, most importantly, the iPhone 5. However, using Google’s Android system also had its disadvantages.

Google and Samsung have created a new age for the Android system. The Android system is developed and supported by Google while the devices are made by Samsung were all the horsepower is. Even though this seems like a very good business idea as they beat Apple which developed its own operating system and device; it has one very small but very large flaw. Optimization. The point where Apple beats Android and its devices is in optimization. As Apple develops its own operating system and devices has allowed it to optimize its operating system to the exact device. For example, how can a dual core CPU out do a quad core? However, because of the code optimization in Apple’s devices has allowed it to function as good as more powerful phones because it does not need all the useless code. In Android, there's code which just check what to do. For example, there's code to check what type of camera is connected to the phone or more importantly, is there a camera connected at all. However, this does not exist in Apple’s operating system. instead of checks, all the specifications of the phone are hard-coded into the operating system making it increasingly faster as all the checking processes become redundant. Although, with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, Google optimized much of the code of Android which allowed the system to become much faster and fluid. However, this fluidity is with the aid of device manufacturer’s processing power for example, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 CPUs. This means that if Apple used a quad core CPU like the other manufacturers, it will have out performed most of the competition because of its optimization between the operating system to the hardware.

We can say that the more these companies compete, it's better for us as a consumer. Time has shown us that the more they compete, the better devices become available for us. Therefore we as consumers should allow the competition to be as fierce between the mobile companies because we will see the benefits. For example, Apple will try to create a device better than Samsung and vice versa. This means that better devices will come into the market with a better price tag. Isn't that the important thing? If we look at the mobile market from the time the first iPhone was released, we can see that the specifications of the mobile phones have been nearly doubling every year. For example, it started with a little CPU which I don’t really classify as a single core, then the single core came into the market, followed by the dual core. In less than a year the quad core quickly came into every phone and now this year with Samsung’s octa core CPU we can say that the CPU power is doubling every year.

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Now who is benefiting out of this? We are the ones that are getting the more power in our phones. For example, it is said that the Galaxy Note III will have an octa core CPU, 3GB of RAM, a full HD LCD screen. Now if this is true then isn’t it our benefit that we are getting a phone that is nearly as strong as a PC. Therefore, we can say that without this competition, technological advancements will incredibly slow down.

Thanks to all the mobile manufacturers, technological advancements in the mobile industry is growing incredibly fast. Transistors inside a CPU used to be the size of a light globe. However, because of Intel’s move into the processing technology, allowed the globe size transistors to become microscopic size. Those transistors are now the size of less than 50 nano-meters. There is a high chance that you probably have an Apple iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, HTC or other smartphones. All of these phones have a CPU which have transistors smaller than 28 nano-meters. The best thing about this is that the size of the transistors are decreasing every year. This means that the

phone you will have in 5 years will probably use so much less power while giving much more processing power. The smaller size also helps the phone not to overheat. ARM’s move into the mobile CPU has allowed to decrease the power consumption of conventional CPUs so that mobile devices can use more powerful processing power without overheating the device within seconds. Again, the competition in the CPU industry has allowed rapid growth in both processing power while creating the chips on an even smaller space, packing more power inside the same space.

To conclude, we need to see that the Apple vs Samsung is nothing more than a media hype up that all fanboys quickly join into. So what Apple creates a phone that's better than all the other phones now? In 2 months time, another company such as LG could make a phone even better than Apple’s. This means that we should just go with our best option. If that means the iPhone is better now compared to its price then choose that. If Samsung has a better phone with a better price tag then get that one.

Google and Android are trademarks of Google Inc, Apple and iOS are trademarks of Apple Inc, Samsung is a trademark of Samsung Inc