Surprisingly there was quite a response to the quick post on the slim chances the new Apple iPhone coming to Korea. I appreciate readers for reminding the many problems other than CDMA vs. GSM the phone will have upon a Korean release (I forgot all the barriers Korea erected to promote home grown standards).
Reaction in Korea is interesting. First, in the first official announcement I have seen Samsung Electronics has admitted being the OEM for the iPhone (Update: Wrong link for this one will have to update it. However Samsung is a strong candidate for being the major silicon producer according to this). This is somewhat interesting since the chip-sets for the iPod have bounced between SigmaTel and Samsung for a couple years now, and the iPhone was announced as containing lots of custom silicon. Makes me wonder who was ASIC producer for most of the custom work.
Meanwhile Lee Kun-Hee, Chairman of Samsung, has given his verdict on the product:
“Although we are waiting to see how U.S. consumers will react, we are not impressed by its features,” said an official of Samsung Electronics, the flagship of the Lee Kun-hee business empire.
“Many of its much-touted features are already available in our products such as smart phones. Technologically speaking, its GSM can be a problem for big data transmissions, as we move into the age of wideband-CDMA,” he said, adding that the iPhone may not turn out to be as big a hit as the iPod.
Wow, that reminds me of a quote when the Shuffle was released:
A Samsung Electronics official said the iPod Shuffle can’t be compared to Samsung’s products.
“It is meaningless to compare the new iPod with our products since we have so many more functions,” said Samsung Electronics. “Also, accessories and batteries are all separate [with the iPod], so it’s not exactly cheap either.”
That was two years ago and iPod has not exactly flopped in Korea. From an article around six months after the bold Samsung prediction on the iPod:
Korea’s sophisticated customers know a good thing when they see it. Apple’s market share for MP3 players in Korea has jumped to 10 percent from nearly zero last year.
Since, Apple was then, and still is, kicking the Samsung Yepp’s ass around the world with a majority of all MP3 players sold, and that is the good news for Samsung. Samsung has had high profile flops with Napster and Microsoft to create an iTunes competitor.
Pride cometh before the fall Mr. Lee…again? Let’s be mindful that a 8GB iPhone is only US$600, much less than the 8GB smart phone model you recently launched at US$835 in Korea.
If you want even more prideful boast, take an analyst from Mirae Asset:
“Apple will come up with the CDMA iPhone here soon because the Silicon Valley giant has to test the viability of high-capacity handsets in Korea, which is filled with tech-savvy users,” Mirae Asset analyst Kim Kyung-mo said.
“In what country can people download gigabytes of movies and music files to the iPhones easier than Korea, which leads the world in mobile and landline networks?” Kim asked.
Remind me Mr. Kim how long were the iPod, Mini, Shuffle, Video, Intel iMac’s, and every other product Apple sells were offered in Korea before the US or Europe? Better yet regale me Mr. Kim with the tale on how critical the iTunes test in Korea was to its success everywhere but in Korea currently. What’s that? There is no Korean iTunes? How do you explain its success without the “country [that] people download gigabytes of movies and music files…easier…, which leads the world in mobile and landline networks”?
That aside, I personally think the iPhone serves more of threat to Samsung than they are saying in public. For the past five years Samsung has focused on the mid-to-high end of the market, gaining much criticism from investors since the low cost mobile phone market has boomed worldwide. Despite the criticism this has paid off handsomely for Samsung. They have a dominant position in a market segment with a handsome gross margin. The iPhone however is aimed squarely at that market since, unlike other smart phones, it is bound to attract others than just corporate types with its iPod and consumer gadget focus.
Korea though is pretty safe as a market for Samsung I think. In the “will Apple have a CDMA version?” question I am mindful of the Microsoft case a few months ago. Back then MS was saying how it may have to discontinue a Hangul version of Windows and/or Office if the FTC ruling stood. Most thought this was a bluffing tactic, which it could have been, however one must admit the idea of doing a custom build for only 45 million consumers in a market that has a big problem with software piracy could very well be a money loser.
Taking this to Apple’s situation, Jobs said in his keynote that he wants only 1% of the global market in one year. Assuming this one percent rule is constant, Korea has a subscriber base of 40 million, which yields a first year market of 400,000 units. However this is a bit unreasonable since it is a stock not a flow (BTW this is what Jobs did in keynote with the one billion figure, which is wrong in my opinion). People are more likely to buy the phone when they upgrade. Based on this article, Korea sells around 1.25 million handsets a month on average. This leads to a first year share for Apple of 150,000.
So the question for Apple is “If we meet our goal and sell 150,000 units in Korea, is that worth the cost and hassle of engineering, making, distributing, and selling a special CDMA phone only for that market?” Not only that, Apple could ask a further question in “How many of those 150,000 units are cannibalized sales from our iPod product line?”
Not only is the iPhone itself questionable for Korea but its technology as well. I have been paying attention to Apple’s patent pipeline for a while now. Jobs’s boast at the keynote of 200+ patents I think was an understatement if anything. I can see many of the patents in the iPhone, but pundits and some of the filings originally connected them mainly to desktop machines or simple iPod derivatives. Accordingly I do not think we will see any of the technology, for example the accelerometer to give letter/landscape switching, any time soon on non-Apple products. This includes Korea since Apple patents filed/issued worldwide.
Dram_man’s call? I think I side with many commenters after the keynote in a way. I think many iPhone features will eventually make it into standard iPod devices, the least of which is the wide screen and UI. The phone itself may never see the light of day in Korea, but this upgraded iPod will. For those of you still here (I am leaving in a few months unless somebody has a job tip), I hope such a “super iPod” comes at the same time as the Asia launch to soothe your pain.
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Well, I don’t think Jobs is too concerned with the iPhone canibalizing sales since he’s already calling it an iPod… with a phone. Also, if that’s canibalizing, that’s some expensive canibalizing since the base model costs 50% more than the top end Ipod 5G. Also, also, you have to remember that the iPod itself was merely a well laid ploy to get more people to buy Macs (which is slowly but surely working).
The only problem I foresee in getting the iPhone into Korea is the Korean version of the FCC blocking it just to keep the home-grown cellphone market intact because, yes, the phone is the hawtness.
I’ll admit that most of its features are already around. But, like the iPod, it’s the simple fact that no one ever *did it* this well that will sell it.
I think that, not just Koreans, but everyone who plays around with it will go, “crap, what were we wasting our time with all these years?”
I have a friend who works for LG as a mobile-phone developer and he has stated that LG is “planning to release a phone to counter Apple’s iPhone”.
He also added that LG is “expecting the iPhone to put a dent in its overseas mobile phone sales” but according to him “the Korean market is safe, because Korean companies make good phones, Koreans like them, and doesn’t expect them to go for a pretty PDA phone” (BTW, Koreans are calling the iPhone a glorified PDA phone)
Despite the bravado regarding the Korean market, some Koreans are impressed by the iPhone and are eagerly waiting and hoping that Apple does a CDMA version.
So, if I was LG or Samsung, I would really take a good hard look at its current product line and come up with something sleek, innovative, and easy to use, real fast, before they get their a**es kicked around by Apple.
Samsung won’t be hurting much:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/0...../#comments
CDMA is not a Korean barrier. It is the cellular technology that the Korean telecoms chose to run with. CDMA is owned by Qualcomm, an American company based out of San Diego. (you might notice their sticker on all your Korean made handphones.)
GSM was a standard created so that there would be standardized networks in Europe.
There are CDMA networks in the U.S and Canada as well, so should Apple want to make the phone available to an even greater number of cellular providers in North America, they will surely produce a CDMA version of the phone.
It seemed like LG has released its answer to the iPhone sooner than we thought.
Here’s a link to an article that “claims” that the iPhone is a copy of LG’s KE850 aka the Prada Phone. (Sorry it’s in Korean)
Here’s an article in English regarding the KE850.
Sorry.
Here’s the english article again.
A note from the HTML Elf: If you open an HTML tag (in particular <a> and <blockquote> tags), you must close the tag! I am tired of fixing these issues. If you don’t know how to use the tags, don’t use them! Every HTML tag, save the line break tag, is opened in brackets, and closed by repeating the same tag prefaced by a slash (”/” character) enclosed in brackets.
Here’s an example of a properly-formatted HTML link:
<a href=”http://www.rjkoehler.com”>Link to the Marmot’s Hole</a>
Note the final </a> tag closing the link.
If you do not close the <a> tag, not only will your link not appear, but you will mung up all of the following comments and page elements.
This same error, made with the <blockquote> tag, leads to the screwy runaway comment nesting problem.
My guess is people are using the formatting buttons above the comment field. If so, take note of the rightmost button: “Close Tags”. This is the button to use to close any HTML tag you opened by use of the other buttons.
Again, I’ll keep fixing these errors when I see them, because I am a stickler for such things, but it would be simpler to avoid the need by commenters using proper HTML.
It seems rather silly for Samsung to admit to being the OEM for the iPhone, and then say they aren’t impressed with it. So you’re telling me you’re not impressed with your own work? That can’t be a good thing…
I don’t know much about cell phones in Korea, but my cell phone in Japan can already do everything that the iPhone can, and I have built-in IC tech for train passes and shopping without cash, as well as a fancy finger print scanner for security. Multi-tasking is also the greatest thing ever. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be the first person in line to buy the thing. Sure I won’t gain any new features, but the Apple phone is just better, it goes does things in a much better way. Design is one of those things you can’t (or at least I can’t) put into words very well, but when something is right, it’s blatantly amazingly right. I think this iPhone is an example of that. I however have concerns as to how well it will do in Japan though, because as I said, design isn’t a spec that has numbers, and if you compare features side to side in numbers with my current phone, the only difference is the touch screen, but without knowing about the superior design, that won’t mean anything to the average
JoeSuzuki.If you read the stories Dram Man has linked, nowhere in those stories does Samsung Electronics admit or claim to be the OEM for the iPhone. It has been reported elsewhere that the “CPU” is a Samsung ASIC of some sort, together with complementary chipset. Samsung doesn’t necessarily have to be assembling the phone just because one of its chips is in there.
My guess, however, is that some Korean company was involved in the OEM process — the LG iClone can’t be an accident. Some Korean got ahold of Apple’s plans and thought that a Korean company ought to see this competitive information. You know, since it’s so unimpressive and all.
Chiamatt> I was not referring to CDMA as a Korea specific barrier, however it is still a barrier (shared by many other coutnries and networks).
Minso> Interesting claim. I wonder how much of that has to do with the simple fact they’re both black and touchscreens. As I mentioned I do keep up on the Apple patent filings, and they are quite extensive on this one. I wonder if they are licensing from LG or vice versa, or if somebody is infringing on somebody’s patent or design rights.
It should be noted here that Apple seems to be pretty brazen by calling it the “iPhone” without holding the trademark rights.
Perhaps they are convinced that Cisco has failed to defend the trademark — perhaps everyone can make an iPhone now.
Brendon:
Sorry, I didn’t RTFA. I was mislead by the link which read “Samsung Electronics has admitted being the OEM for the iPhone” to believe that Samsung was, ya know, the OEM for the iPhone
It’s not your fault. I think Dram is misrepresenting things.
The Cholocolate phone had a decent design but lame-o functionality. I expect the iPhone will excel at both. Bring on the iClones.
@Judge-judy
Exactly. The chocolate looked pretty, but didn’t do a damned thing that every other Korean phone could do.
Just looking at the picture of that Samsung phone vs. the iPhone, I can already tell that the same thing is happening. The iPhone’s GUI has *several* multitasking features right in front of you, while the Samsung phone only has the traditional layout… with a touchscreen.
Grumble… Wrong link and cannot find the right one in my history files. That’s the problem with Browsing/writing/posting/and traveling all at once. Will change and try to find the link later.
Maybe iPhone will become like Kleenex. Originally a product name, but instead it will be used to mean this new generation of cell phones that have it all. Isn’t the official name Apple iPhone? Perhaps their angle is Cisco can have the Cisco iPhone, and they’ll have the Apple iPhone, and Samsung can have the Samsung iPhone. However I think Apple should be going after Cisco for infringing on it’s name before Cisco should be attacking Apple. Hasn’t Apple sued (I don’t know about successfully though) other tech companies for putting an ‘i’ as the first letter of their product name? Apple does have the iPod, iMac, iBook and iSight after all.
Korea is not the only one. Japan is also saying ho-hum to the iPhone.
http://www.latimes.com/busines.....full.story
Problem: For the last several weeks, I’ve been researching the pros and cons of the whole iPod vs. PSP, vs. even the DMB phones very recently. For a whole lot of money, I can end up watching videos on a tiny little screen, after a lot of hassle of converting the video source into the necessary format. Ugh! For the last couple years, I’ve been pretty happy with listening to my MP3s on my Apple iPod Shuffle, and simply buying DVDs to watch at home. Not a horrible solution, and it has been quite convenient. But with an aging cell phone too, I’ve had to include that into the whole technology/entertainment equation too.
Conclusion: Apple’s iPhone isn’t a minute too late. It also looks as slick as one would expect an Apple product to look. Sorry Samsung, you’ll have to concentrate on one of your other 18,503 business units instead.
Other thoughts: Now, if Apple would include computing functionality into the iPhone, I could finally ditch my laptop too, as long as I could connect a DVD-R and external HDD to it and had video out ports.
–Remort
I’ve witnessed the same envy and fear-driven effort by Korean firms at diminishing the efforts of others in several other contexts. One was particularly notable. Another major chaebol took it upon themselves to diss a “product” of a foreign competitor that (i) had won several international awards as best of its kind, (ii) the Korean competitor had spent years trying to get involved with by attempting to induce the foreign firm to act as its consultant for the development of the product in Korea or enter into a JV with it (on the grounds that it needed to be “localized” with the chaebol’s purported expertise. When none of this had the desired effect - the foreign firm being savvy enough to know that any sort of “cooperation” by the local chaebol would be nothing more than a naked grab of its know-how - the chaebol managed to the “old-fashioned way” by buying-off the major local metropolitan government to whom the foreign firm had contracted to supply the goods - literally; when it came out several municipal officials got the axe and the mayor was jailed and later hanged himself in his cell). In the end, the city didn’t get its project, the taxpayers got hosed and stand to lose an amount that will stagger them if the foreigners win the pending lawsuit which is crawling through what passes for judicial process in Korea at a pace that would have left the principals in Bleak House gumsmacked.
Yes, the smell of the sea is often enough to drive men mad with desire and it seems to have claimed more than a few people in that city. I have had to shove bits of mint leaves up my nose just to avoid the same mad fate.
I suspect if this city had a mascot, it would be a “to-kei-bi”.
Do tell, Sperwer! That sounds like a thread of its own.
Samsung has always seethed at not ever having a truly defining product. They’ve never had a pong, walkman, iPod, etc. This must be a real bee in the bonnet to see a computer company come into the cellphone space, Samsung’s space, with a possible defining product. Could be they really aren’t worried, or it could be psychological denial as Jared Diamond explains:
“Consider a narrow deep river valley below a high dam, such that if the dam burst, the resulting flood of water would drown people for a long distance downstream. When attitude pollsters ask people downstream of the dam how concerned they are about the dam’s bursting, it’s not surprising that fear of a dam burst is lowest far downstream, and increases among residents increasingly close to the dam.
“Surprisingly, though, when one gets within a few miles of the dam, where fear of the dam’s breaking is highest, as you then get closer to the dam the concern falls off to zero! That is, the people living immediately under the dam who are certain to be drowned in a dam burst profess unconcern. That is because of psychological denial: the only way of preserving one’s sanity while living immediately under the high dam is to deny the finite possibility that it could burst.”
Of course, this is necessary to live in Seoul as well…
I think we could say the same thing about Korea, Inc. and modern Korea in general. Have they invented anything truly singularly noteworthy since metal type and Hangul other than a culture suffused with “resentiment” - I mean in the sense that Nietzsche used the term, which is why I’ve used the French rather than English: i.e., the special torment felt as one deliberately relives experiences of feeling powerless and cossets the sensation of impotence even while knowing that it debilitates one’s capacity to behave as anything other than a perennial loser.
Have they invented anything truly singularly noteworthy since metal type and Hangul…?
Whether noteworthy or no, Koreans did invent the hardware MP3 player back in 1997.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3_player#History
Samsung has been waging war with Apple for about two years now.
Here is an NYTimes article about Samsung’s efforts to recruit some of the people behind the scenes who developed the iPod concept.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02.....1298696400
On the patent issue, just to clarify: just because the patent may be directed to a desktop system doesn’t mean it wouldn’t also cover the iPhone (though you’re probably right about that accelerometer example). Depends on how the patent claims are drafted.
Also, re the 200+ patent figure, do you know if that is US patents only, and does it exclude duplicate foreign filings (e.g., one invention may result in separate patents in multiple countries)? Just curious.
OR> You are right in that it really depends on how the claims are structured. I am assuming that Apple did them to cover both handheld and desktop devices. However I do wonder how a Markman would actualy go if aspects are really challenged, especially considering the different market segments (is a “mobile handset” a “handled computing device”? And if so, where exactly is that line?). Accordingly I wonder if Apple’s cuteness in its filings for privacy may come back to haunt them.
I am assuming the 200+ are PCT filings not patents in individual countires. In a simular vein, it should be stated that likely the 200+ are patent APPLICATIONS not patents yet. Some of them may very well be rejected due to prior art.
I’ve looked at the specs of the new iPhone,and I’m not impressed at all. I agree with Samsung, it’s nothing new. The only thing that’s improved are the way it’s packaged, marketed, and how it looks pretty. That’s about it.
Going strictly by the past quality problems of this:
use-it-for-6-months-and-throw-away-junk-which-breaks-all the-time iPod,
I wouldn’t be surprised if this iPhone will be a similar junk that will cost you a fortune just so that you can brag to your friends how hip you are.
There is one thing Samsung is wrong about though. This phone will sell, and sell well, putting a sales dent on Samsung world-wide. Just look at the iPod junk(full of quality problems), still sells like crazy because of the name Apple. But is that going to hurt Samsung’s bottom line? No.
The more iPhones sold, the more profit for Samsung, because of what’s inside (chipset,memory,LCD,etc - all Samsung’s).
cm from Canada. Since when did any product from Canada impress anyone. Oh yeah, I remember when you guys combined blueberries with maple syrup–yummmyy for my tummy. Give me a break–the iphone rocks!
I don’t think Apple has any intentions to make the iPhone available to multiple carriers in a single country – Cingular or else, the iPhone will stay the exclusive of a single provider for the moment. Same in the rest of the world.
Also, for Japan there’s one more problem: like Korea, it is not GSM there either, and as much as the Japanese are Mac fans, this goes beyond early-adopters and people who love anything that’s new shiny and cute. Besides, localizing a product for a market goes beyond translating the menus – although with OS X, there should be few problems getting text displayed properly, but I’d really like to see how input would work on those things – there’s a lot of culture to incorporate into it. Japanese mobile phone users don’t call or SMS much, they email each other all the time – phone comms being too expensive. And like Koreans they type freaking fast on them mobile phone keyboards. How’s that gonna translate on a touch screen? Blech… Also, web browsing is nice, but will cyworld’s homepys and other Korean IE-centered web sites display properly on these machines? Duh. Way too much work for earnings that are meager at best…
sumo294 - you may have heard of something called BlackBerry? They’re made by Research In Motion in Ontario, Canada.
Dram - about the Markman (for the non-patent geeks - court hearings relating to the meaning of terms in patent claims), the cynical answer is that the result depends on which jurisdiction you’re in.
I’m not too sure how market definitions would affect the interpretation, since the process is supposed to be from the viewpoint of one in the relevant art (field).
In any event, I agree with your point that the iPhone is a bigger threat to Samsung than they’re publicly acknowledging.
Actually, Blackberry will kill this iPhone at anyday of the week in terms of useablity. The problem with this touch function with iPhone is that you can’t type fast enough because you can’t feel it. It’s useless for business people who are on the go and who need to get the message out quick, without struggling with a fancy touch screen - give me a break. What this iPhone is for, are the kids who want a cool toy. You want a serious machine? Blackberry is it. This MAC shit can’t even do enterprise mail retrievals where you can sync up with 60% of the server industry (which are Microsoft NOT MAC). But hey, like I said, if you want a nice looking fragile toy that will break if a leaf falls on it, and you have lots of money to flush down the toilet, buy the crap. But if you want something that will work far better with far less money, want to get some work done, and is a serious business machine, stay with Blackberry.
Hey, that’s my opinion only. And you can tell I was one of the former iPod owners who weren’t happy with all the problems it had. So forgive me if I’m pessimistic of iPhones. This thing is just a major hype. I can’t believe so many people are falling for it. Maybe with all the broken useless iPhones that will inevitably appear, people will be put off completely.
cm from Canada you are missing the point. The iPhone has wifi based Apple platform software. That means a lot of gerbils will be writing codes for new nifty programs. It will be essentially be a VoIP before Christmas. 8 gigs does limit the phone for now but add the next generation flash memory and boom you have a 30 to 80 gig iPhone with some serious open-source programs geared to a new generation of youths who will have little problems manipulating the newer multiple touch screen. The iPhone is going to wreak havoc–seriously.
I agree. Apple was late introdrocing an MP3 player and managed somehow to completely dominate the market. I don’t think it was simply luck that did that. Ever since the digital watch, electronics people only seem to know one game plan, to add more and more gadget features. Apple seems to realize that adding more and more features that most people will never figure out how to use just doesn’t work anymore. Comments by the Korean industry suits shows that they haven’t grocked that concept yet… and are condemed to make parts for Apple if they want to stay in business.
There is one catch though: the OS X-based OS the iPhone uses is not an open system at this time, meaning people will not be able to write for it without the official backing of Apple. That is really not good at all. The iPhone may still end up being more useful if Apple rethinks this notion. Here is a linkregarding such.
All the little girbils are going to write codes under open source? HA! BS. Apple has confirmed that that is not true.
iPhone locked down, Apple confirms
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2.....wn_iphone/
I don’t care what features you have or you don’t have. If you can’t get the quality right, then in my books, you’re not great, you’re just a big hype. As a former iPod owner, I’m not convinced, sorry.
Apple Faces Quality Problems
http://www.slyck.com/story930.html
iPod Quality Nightmare
http://www.neowin.net/forum/lo.....06052.html
Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2.....page2.html
Would you buy a $600 phone just so that you can have that something pretty to look at? When you can get phones that has just as many features if not better, but are free? I have my doubts.
Should Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony-Ericson, Palm, and Blackberry be all shaking in their boots? Will Apple monopolize this industry, sweeping out all the competition out under? Hope not! Just look at Microsoft and tell me that’s what you wish for. Insane.
CM>I can agree to a few of your points. I too have been affected by iPod quality. However part of me (perhaps the non-rational part) wonders how much of that is due to the volumes iPods are produced vs. Mac Computers. (eg problems only got to limited base, and recalls never generated much press).
I think part of the question for both sides of this debate is exactly what Apple means by “powered by OS X”. Full? Stripped? Custom? I have heard a rumor that the OS is Darwin, a predecessor to OS X. Anyway, once we know the exact platform, we can speculate the chances of running apps, and what form they will take.
Sumo> In context to the above, I wonder about “widget” development. Something tells me it will be a lot more restrictive than the current Dashboard on OS X.
OR> Perhaps its a good time to invest in Apple-themed office space market for ED-TX (I also heard rumors ND, of all places, is growing).
Dram_man, contrary to the belief that PC’s with Microsoft OS crash hard, and crash often, while the Macs stay solid as rock, what we’re seeing are what we have known all along with Microsoft.
And I think Apple is quickly losing that smugness that they had over Microsoft.
The more popular you are, and the more software you sell, the more bugs will appear as more virus writers target your market. If you were a virus creater, who would you target - Microsoft who has 70% of the market or Mac, who has 20% of the market? And I think as Apple grows, they are finding out what Microsoft had to go through. The difference is, they are going in opposite directions. While Microsoft is coming out with some fantastic secure, stable products like the Vista, Mac is going the other way in the quality race. Mac OS X is riddled with vulnerabilities! Believe it or not, with the latest Microsoft products and their improvements in patchings, they’ve leap frogged over the Mac in security. Mac is a few years behind Microsoft in security.
Would you want a phone that is run by an OS that is susceptible to hacker attacks and viruses? I’m sorry, but I think I’ll pass on that.
When you get bigger, you come under bigger scrutiny. Apple hasn’t shown me yet that they are dealing adequately with increasing number of attacks that the bigger scrutiny is generating.
http://www.eweek.com/category2.....397,00.asp
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4739432.stm
Dram_man, I think your post is fairly dead on. The iPhone is a mixed blessing for Samsung, but that’s the case with many products in the CE industry because the company is both an end-products maker and a components supplier. The components business brings higher profit margins and generally wins out in the intra-mural battles that must rage within Samsung about end-product strategy. One can imagine, though probably not prove, that the reason LG beat Samsung to the punch with a high-definition DVD player that handles both Blu-ray and HD-DVD is because Samsung’s relationship to Sony is now so tight in the LCD-panel business (the two companies are jointly paying for the most expensive LCD factory ever) that Samsung didn’t want to upset Sony, the Blu-ray camp leader, by being the first to break ranks and build a dual-mode player.
Anyway, on the iPhone, Samsung’s chip business will get a lift it appears by providing both flash and logic chips to Apple for the device. Samsung’s chip business is the real profit driver of the company, providing more than two-thirds of all profit. In the just-ended fourth quarter, its margin was 30% versus the 7.5% margin in the cellphone business.
Samsung’s cellphone business is struggling. Its margins are lower than both Motorola and Nokia despite its focus on high-end phones. Even worse, the Samsung cellphone operation probably won’t have to wait until Apple begins selling the iPhone to feel a bite from it. Some of the early reviews of the iPhone, in particular Walt Mossberg’s column in the Wall Street Journal, said that buyers of smartphones who are considering the new Palm Treo or Samsung BlackJack may just want to wait until June to have the iPhone to compare against them. The prospect that some prospective buyers of the BlackJack (which isn’t available in Korea but is a promising, high margin GSM phone for Samsung) will wait before buying, and a portion of them will choose Apple, is bad enough.
If this is the case, why has Samsung (and nearly every other chaebol) been groaning for years to move into the higher margin end product markets and away from the fluctuating but trending overall toward thin margin commodity-like businesses, like (most) components?
The iPhone may not yet be perfect, it’s still only a 1.0 release after all, but I’m finally starting to see that Apple’s rank of ‘World’s Most Innovative Company’ is well deserved. The iPhone, like the iPod before it, is SICK. Way beyond anything else out there.
It’s glaringly obvious that Samsung Chairman Lee doth protest too much. Why go to the trouble of a press release if he’s so smugly underwhelmed? The Korea Times graphics department probably (unintentionally) nailed Lee’s true reaction to Job’s keynote (”???”). Lee: “What is THAT baby? Oh MAN, I WANT one!” Followed by “HOW did Apple blow us away with their very first release when we’ve been making phones for years?” and finally a heartfelt “Da-yam”.
Instead of feigning disinterest Samsung execs should be a bit embarrassed for having released the same old humdrum stuff for so long. Lee shouldn’t feel too bad, even the ‘Mac Faithful’ were taken off guard by this one and other handset makers around the world will be pulling all the stops to play catch-up with Jobs & Co.
As for the rest of the world, where the real cutting edge stuff is allowed to enter the market without too much hassle, watch out, especially when iPhone’s 3G or above capabilities are unlocked and customers are allowed to choose their own carriers.
Come June, whatever phone I have is getting trashed even if some other company manages to release an Apple knockoff by then.
Not really, Bluejives. Not to nitpick but your claim is a bit off. mp3 came from Fraunhofer Gesellschaft in Germany. The Institute then developed an MP3 player in the early 90s (few details exist but it obviously had to run on some sort of hardware, no matter the speed or size). Like the scaled down Korean version which came several years later, it was a commercial flop. All Saehan did was simply cram existing foreign tech (software and hardware) into a handheld device format. Great, and a good marketing attempt but as you see they can’t claim to have invented mp3 or even accurately claim ‘world’s first (hardware)’ MP3 player. First handheld? Perhaps. MP3 or even first MP3 hardware player? No, sorry. That’d be like Samsung saying they invented the cellphone or plasma TV screens.
Not really, Bluejives. Not to nitpick but your claim is a bit of a stretch. MP3 came from Fraunhofer Gesellschaft in Germany. The Institute then developed an MP3 player in the early 90s (few details exist but it obviously had to run on some sort of hardware, no matter the speed or size). Like the scaled down Korean version which came several years later, it was a commercial flop. Saehan simply crammed existing foreign tech (software and hardware) into a handheld device format. Great, and a good attempt to market the format but as you see they can’t claim to have invented mp3 or even accurately claim world’s first true hardware MP3 player. First handheld ? Perhaps. MP3 or even first MP3 hardware player? No, sorry.
Oopps, posted that one twice. CM, I agree that the iPhone isn’t going to kill off the Blackberry market anytime soon, those things are very specialized and seem to (rightly) have their own dedicated following. Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and and Co. certainly have more to fear with the introduction of iPhone than does RIM.
Here is Korea. There are no free mobile phones. In fact, many, many people — including several of my co-workers who looked at their W700,000 phones quite glumly after seeing the iPhone launch video — are accustomed to paying very good money for phones that they replace every year.
Not to stoop to OS platform debating but such comments as:
Such is not accurate at all. Vista has already been demonstrated to have major security flaws — before it has been released and its hardware demands . . . don’t ask. One group of software developers that I personally know of has declared the impending release of Vista DOA and these guys make money coding. I trust them in this much but additionally no spam organization has “successfully” hacked the Mac OS yet. The current wave of botnet spam that has arisen from countless infected windows machines will more likely than not, ween the public off of Windows and onto Macs, which have not yet been hacked and are still much safer for more reasons than I would want to list here now.
If the iphone does remain a closed system, then it would be even yet more difficult to hack, given that more virus writers might focus on infecting machines through bluetooth connections.
Darwin is the core of Mac OS X, the lower layer on top of which sits the pretty things the user sees, ie the User Interface. It is open-source, and based on FreeBSD 5 and XNU, Next’s kernel. If the iPhone’s OS is anything related to Mac OS X, it has to be based on Darwin alright. The question is rather, what are the top layers? Carbon/Cocoa? Quartz? Aqua? Dubbed-down versions thereof?
Closed platform or not, I wonder how long it’s going to take Linux hackers to bootstrap those machines with Tux the cute penguin… Look at what happened to the iPod. I do think however that it’s a shame to do this, as iPods are not computers, and the resulting UI is lame, at best. Still…
It may hurt Motorola, Nokia, and other mobile phone manufacturers, but I don’t think it will hurt Samsung that much. In another way, it may even pad their profit. For instance Samsung provides Apple with NAND flash chips that goes into all those iPods and iPhones. The more Apple sells, the bigger the shared slice of Samsung. It’s not exactly a coincidence that fortunes of Samsung has risen right at the same time Apple has risen. Samsung’s mobile phone unit may hurt, but their other businesses will get a huge boost from all those Apple sales.
We also know from the Stevenote that the iPhone’s OS X has (at least some of) the Cocoa API and at least one feature forthcoming in Leopard — Core Animation (although suspiciously, the “a” in animation was lower-case on the slide). We also know the iPhone runs Safari, an app which is heavily dependent on Quartz. But, you don’t need Aqua if the apps are all full-screen, which is how it appears in the demo videos.
As for Carbon, no need to bring that cruft forward (except if it’s true that Safari links to the Carbon framework).
Has anyone mentioned that the iPhone is powered by a Samsung processor?
http://www.engadget.com/2007/0.....not-intel/
“Cruft”. Oh you mean all that stuff that Korea Inc. tries to pass off as cutting edge technology through the medium of (amatuerishly unconvincing)
bullshitadvertising and that really belongs in those back alley shops in Hannam 2-dong. Thanks for the reminder, Brendon.My personal prediction is that the ridiculously-high price tag on the Macintrash will continue to chase off the casual consumer for at least the foreseeable future… Maybe Windows’s security flaws will chase more people to unix-based systems, but it seems pretty ridiculous to me to pay double (or more) what you’d otherwise pay for a comparable machine just for the rather dubious privilege of running the Crapple OS.
Most Apple apps except maybe the latest, Intel-based ones [and even that is not sure], still link to Carbon – which is a nice library BTW, and thank God not Objective-C dependent! Cocoa alone isn’t enough, and both frameworks have stuff the other hasn’t. The Finder, Address Book, iCal, iChat, iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, Keynote, Mail, Preview, QuickTime Player, to name a few, all link and depend on Carbon. This library is not going anywhere, and is here for the duration!
This is odd. Look at the LG model and the iPhone.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/0.....-at-birth/
The two look strikingly alike. Interestingly enough, Apple is being sued by Cisco for patent infringement. This could be lawsuit number 2.
The LG model which the iPhone looks strikingly similar, is called the Chocolate phone and it was released on Dec 15. It won the 2007 International Model Design’s product design award.
http://www.engadgetmobile.com/.....chocolate/
Just look at the phones and you notice that the size and the layouts of the buttons look strikingly alike.
Like I said, there is nothing innovative about the iPhone. I would never buy a phone made by a computer company that has never experienced making a phone.
cm writes:
That’s why I call LG’s the iClone. Just because LG introduced first doesn’t mean Apple copied LG. Ask yourself this: Which is more likely — that the world’s most innovative company, Apple, obviously copied a Korean product and boldly held it up to the world as the “world’s first”; or that the Korean company ripped off Apple? Koreans are well known for an unusual grasp of the concept of originality. Recall how Samsung ripped Apple’s OS X icons for a Samsung model released into the Korean market. But it could just be a coincidence: If you’re going to be doing a touchscreen the shape of the phone is pretty obvious. Perhaps we should meet at Starpreya for a latte to talk it over.
Cisco is suing Apple for trademark infringement, not patent. Cisco acquired a company which had registered the iPhone trademark, but it appears that Cisco may have failed to offer a product for sale with that trademark — thus permitting it to lapse. But if they want to hold onto the iPhone trademark, Cisco is legally obligated to sue Apple after the splash of Apple’s iPhone announcement.
Too bad for you. Cisco’s full lineup of phones are first-rate internet telephony devices, including the Linksys WIP320 “iPhone”. I’m going to be buying one of those as soon as it’s available in Korea. Yet for most people Cisco is not the name that one would instinctively associate with “phone”. Following your rule, we’d all be stuck with Western Electric or GTE. As for me, I’m glad we have Cisco and Apple (and Samsung and LG) pushing the state of the art forward. The Apple iPhone is going to light a fire under a lot of asses, and that’s good for you and me.
Actually, touchtones for a phone is a bad ideal. Doesn’t matter which model or which company. The touchtone concept is nothing new here anyway. It was first brought out by Sony Erikson in 2002 and never caught on. I’ll have to check out that Linksys WIP320 “iPhone”. I don’t have any fast rule. I just don’t like Apple nor their OSX.
We noticed. That’s why you’re saying crazy things unsupported by fact — it’s an emotional thing.
Uhh.. no, what crazy things have I been saying? Like why would you buy a 2.5G phone (made by the same company that made that iPod crap) over any of the 3G phones?
You wrote:
Tee hee.
I gather that you don’t believe that Vista is better then this Mac shit?
I think you should be able to figger’ that one out on your own. But if you can’t, here’s the key:
Zonath, you obviously do not own a Mac or have looked at the prices. I got an extra Mac (MacMini) a few months ago for 569,000 won and it compares wonderfully against any wintel box out here and I do not need to worry about trojans. Though OSX is not perfect, it is far better — and in the long run, considering the time spent extra software needed to keep a windows box virus and hack-free — is cheaper to use. I know of people who have thrown out their windows boxes when they got so infected that they gave up trying to keep them clean, so please, educate yourself before you engage in such dead-wrong commentary. Try perusing macintouch.com for a start — I’m sure you would find things of interest therein.
Mac OSX is not inherently more secure then Microsoft. It only seems more secure because it is attacked far less then Microsoft. If Mac OS is attacked by the same number as Microsoft, everyone would be talking about how Mac sucks. In this regard, Microsoft gets an unfair shake. If you’re the biggest name then you’re going to have more hackers attempting to bring you down.
If Mac gets more popular, their security vulnerablities will get worse. But because of their smugness, they’ve neglected their patching infrastructure.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/s.....762,00.htm
I can take any copy of MS XP and load it onto any different computer which is a PC (which by the way costs half that of the overpriced Mac). But I can’t do that with Mac OS X. Everything has to be a doublly expensive Mac hardware or it won’t load.
My Mac mini might be my favorite computer ever. (Jay Miner’s Amiga and Atari computers probably hold pride of place, though.) But I own and have owned a lot of Macs: a Cube, a G4 tower (the Wind Tunnel model, which I hated), an iBook, a 17″ G4, two G4 minis, and an Intel mini. The Intel Mac mini is just about the perfect modern computer.
cm, your zdnet link is a wonderful PR piece for Sophos software, who writes decent anti-virus software for non-existent OSX viruses.
As per one commentator (David Charlap) at macintouch.com:
As it is now, you may load XP into a cheaper box, but you *will* spend more time and money — eventually, trying to keep your box free of virus and trojans, and will still be stuck with a highly insecure OS that internet criminals adore.
Gee… brilliant deduction on that whole ‘you don’t own a Mac’ thing. What tipped you off? And yes, I did look at prices. Fairly recently, even… $500 plus for a computer that doesn’t even come with a monitor, keyboard, or mouse? Seems a bit spendy to me.
If you spend 90% of your online time surfing porn sites and engaging in other high-risk activities, I can maybe see this… But I run my little windows machine quite happily with the free virus-checking program I downloaded and AdAware. Again, for some, OSX might be worth being reamed by Steve Jobs, but then again, for me OSX isn’t anything special.
Although I don’t really want to engage in mud-slinging with a Crapple fanatic, I do kind of find it ironic that one would ask me to ‘educate myself’. After all, you’re basically using a computer that’s being actively marketed to technophobes. And while I may belong to the ‘uneducated masses’, at least I don’t treat my OS like a motherfucking religion, immediately jumping on anyone or anything that dares to question it.
North Dakota?! Aww, for the love of… That’s the first I’ve heard of that. Sigh. I keep wishing that the next hot spot for these cases would be someplace that people actually would like going to, like Hawaii or Puerto Rico, or Southern Florida.
you sound like a jilted lover, zonath.
Just because iPod is popular, doesn’t mean it’s any good. Must tech savvy people will tell you it’s one of the worst crap on the market produced in China with slave labor.
Only reason why iPod is popular is because most people are stupid to understand how to use computer software properly, and itune is pretty easy to use by comparison, pretty must on the level of most public educated kids in America, and the world for that matter although most people are beginning to tune out itune as well.
I personally think people should boycott Apple and Steve Jobs for being immoral, greedy American bastards. I don’t approve of using slave labor and “Ipod City” is a perfect example of that.
Nobody has perfected slave labor better than Americans.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ar.....-7039.html
Ori> Wow that is one of the more incendiary trolls to start a flame war that I have seen in some time. Congratulations!
That’s because you’re spoiled rotten. My father paid $2638 for a 48K Apple ][+ (no disk drive or monitor though) in 1977 — which in 2005 dollars would be $8500 by strict consumer-price indexing, or $16,179 by comparing to the proportion of per-capita GDP. (I do all this math in my head.)
Now you’re grousing about spending $500 — the equivalent of $85-175 in 1977 dollars — for a machine 2000 to 10,000 times more powerful. Yes, I suppose you could get an el strippo Windows box for $349, but that $150 could just as easily get spent on lunch somewhere good (or on “System Fix-It” spyware and anti-virus utilities). Give us a break.
Yeah…. and when I was a kid, I walked to school ten miles in the snow. Uphill… both ways.
My original point, Brendon, is that the average Mac is priced well above the average PC — a fact that the typical consumer is going to take into account when making a purchasing decision. Which is why PCs will continue to dominate the market for the foreseeable future, especially as Windows continues to close the gap (or at least the public perception gap) between itself and OSX.
Anyhow, I’m sure we’re all quite aware that computers these days are vastly more powerful than those of our youths, and also much cheaper. But what’s the point of making that comparison? After all, Apple isn’t competing with itself from 30 years ago.
What does Brendon do for a living again? Isn’t he a lawyer? What’s your hourly rates again Brandon? I guess lawyers can afford the Mac. LOL.
I know why LG said they were “flattered” that someone else would copy their design as opposed to suing: they know that the “striking” resemblance between the LG phone and the iPhone comes from the “striking” physical resemblance between the LG phone and the iPod. LG knows when to duck the countersuit.
Can’t speak for anyone else but I have had three mp3 players in the last 2 years: iRiver, Samsung, and Rio (128, 256 and 512meg respectively). They all broke within 4 months of purchase, the first two due to the battery overheating and melting the plastic casing and the Rio LED display faded to nothing. I’ve had my iPod now for 6 months and nary a problem. The volume of the iPod is also far superior to anything I have used or tested in stores. It simply doesn’t compare.
Someone said “most tech savvy people will tell you iPod is a piece of crap.” Well the ratio of tech savvy people to non-tech savvy people in the big big market of portable digital players is outrageous and good business is in marketing the simple to those who don’t want to fuss with all the bells and whistles. Can it be that hard to figure out common sense business practices like that? Apple figured it out. So all you tech savvy people who don’t like the iPod: Bite my ass! My iPod does exactly what I want, STILL.
“I’ve looked at the specs of the new iPhone,and I’m not impressed at all. I agree with Samsung, it’s nothing new. The only thing that’s improved are the way it’s packaged, marketed, and how it looks pretty. That’s about it.”
CM, I am one of those retarded people who looked at the specs for the new Zune and spent $249. Unfortunately for me, the hardware was more-or-less completely crippled by Bill Gate’s software. I am also one of those people who don’t like Apple products in general. (Hell, what’s the point of buying a computer you can never play kick ass FPS games? One mouse button? Phooey. There is no joy to be had in overclocking a mac.)
But I think people will buy the iphone. you say that the only improvement is cosmetics. But well, that’s why people pay Steve’s premium to buy that nice looking product. They can’t get enough of sliding their fingers in circles. THEY LOVE THAT CUBIC BOX that packages all the apple products. I agree with you the product is crap for the money. But it appears most people disagree with us and believe that the nice lookingness of the product gives them a sense of nice feelingness. So I can see a future when all the kids are going to buy this.
On top of that there is a very strong brand image with Apple. You know what you buy will be something white, shiny, and projecting a warm glowing light. It will be fairly luddite-proof. And you will join a community of Apple fanboys like some quasi-cult religion. If you buy samsung, you have no idea what it is you are buying. There is no brand image of luddite-proofness. It’s not white. It’s not shiny. It doesnt have a warm glowing light. There is no cult for you to buy, and if you google Samsung, you will most likely hit website that talks about it’s Microsoft-like business practices.
iphones might clobber Samsung.
LG is “flattered” that Apple copied its design for the Prada Phone
Notice how the Korean reporter also concludes that Apple is the copier while LG(Koreans)are the innovators.
I wonder how “flattered” LG will be when the iPhone starts to kick their mobile a**es.
I live in Korea and I’m dying to get one. The main difference between Samsung products versus Apple’s is that Samsung products compete in the general markets with the likes of Nokia, LG and others but Apple products compete only in “Apple markets” only which is without competition. Samsung brand is not in the same weight class as Apple’s. People buy Apple products because they’re Apple’s. And as you’ve told many many times early on in your childhood, you can’t compare apples with oranges.
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