Samsung is a pretty strange company overall, perhaps more comparable to one of the sprawling late-19th-century industrial conglomerates than anything in the current U.S. business landscape. It not only has a huge array of businesses it officially owns (from computers to shipbuilding), but is part of an unofficial, even larger conglomerate, the "Samsung family group", consisting of the other companies the family controls.
It's also been pretty deeply intertwined with the Korean government at various times, along with the other two big family groups (LG and Hyundai), who it sort-of competes with and sort-of has a cozy relationship with. All that actually makes it somewhat remarkable that it's coming up with interesting tech; that kind of company is not usually nimble.
Those are referred to as Chaebols in Korea, in Japan they're called Keiretsu (pre WWI these were Zaibatsu). I think the family ownership involved in the Chaebols somewhat helps them remain innovative. You have a centralized force that can guide the ship during particularly important junctures in history.
Don't know if it's really conquering, but here's a trend that I've seen:
In the past, American products were regarded as the best and Made in USA meant quality. Next were Japanese products and consumer electronics. Starting 5-10 years ago, I began to see the well-regarded brands like Sony and Toshiba become more of a boutique brand (overpriced compared to what it offered) as they focused more on style than functionality. Most recently, products from China and Korea-based companies (Haier, Samsung, LG, Hyundai) have started to become more mainstream.
This just shows that there will always be up-and-coming competitors who will out-hustle, out-engineer, and out-build the previous market dominators if they don't keep innovating and staying fresh. The smaller competitors, given enough time, will catch up.
It's strange that we see Asian brands as copy-cats all the time. Copy-cats just copy but a lot of upcoming Asian brand are improving. I think this is why Steve Jobs was inspired by Sony: making improvements.
But I have to admit there are also a lot of useless copy-cat products on the market (not only in Asia). Those 'brands' will not survive because they won't offer an improvement.
I don't know if there will "always" be up-and-coming competitors. There are only so many third world countries left to come up and "always" is a very long time. Hopefully, there are many models for "coming up", since making cooler gadgets probably won't work for everyone.
Of course, one could make the argument that current first world countries will decline to the point where they can begin to compete on price just as the up-and-comers begin to charge more. It's already happening, to a limited degree, in autos. Some manufacturing has come back to the US in places where wages and taxes are low. The recent economic downturn has caused quite a few kinds of work to return to the US, including manufacturing that was taking place in China.
After all, they manufacture tons of components that go into these devices. It's not hard to take a part that someone else designed and stamp your own brand on it.
That solar netbook is $USD372.94 (Sh35,000). 14 hour battery (1 hour noon sun gives 0.5 hour worth of battery life), 1.3kg, 1GB RAM, 250GB HDD, 1.3 GHz atom (single or dual), 10' screen. http://global.samsungtomorrow.com/?p=4768
Presumably, an ARM-based solar netbook would have even longer battery life. But the (netbook) apps aren't there yet, and aren't coming, so they stay with x86 and Windows.
btw: the kindle, with passive E-ink, has 2 months battery (i.e. over x100 longer)
> btw: the kindle, with passive E-ink, has 2 months battery (i.e. over x100 longer)
And my TI-84 has had the same batteries for at least two years (it's getting to the point that I'm starting to wonder when they're going to run out, since I know that it will be the worst possible time). It doesn't matter, it's an irrelevant comparison, unless you're saying that something more similar to the kindle would be better for developing regions where solar power is a major selling point (which is a really good thing to point out - why does a solar powered netbook need a 250GB HDD? Why not a small SSD, if that would save power?).
I'm not 100% sure, but I recall a story about a division of Samsung that made watches, being banned from selling them in Germany or somewhere like that. They copied/cloned something that Rolex did (Maybe the quartz crystal or something like that). Does anyone know the actual details about this story?
the most important thing mentioned in the article is "targeting the five billion people who live outside the current 'traditional' smartphone market." - whoever understands this will be the world leader in the future ... even the companies like Nokia and Yahoo that looks like failures today can comeback because they understand these 5 billion people better than many others , but somehow the noise of 'traditional' marketers has disillusioned their original strategy... someone has to just pick-up those threads and bring back these companies on track.
[+] [-] _delirium|14 years ago|reply
It's also been pretty deeply intertwined with the Korean government at various times, along with the other two big family groups (LG and Hyundai), who it sort-of competes with and sort-of has a cozy relationship with. All that actually makes it somewhat remarkable that it's coming up with interesting tech; that kind of company is not usually nimble.
[+] [-] jakarta|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jontsai|14 years ago|reply
In the past, American products were regarded as the best and Made in USA meant quality. Next were Japanese products and consumer electronics. Starting 5-10 years ago, I began to see the well-regarded brands like Sony and Toshiba become more of a boutique brand (overpriced compared to what it offered) as they focused more on style than functionality. Most recently, products from China and Korea-based companies (Haier, Samsung, LG, Hyundai) have started to become more mainstream.
This just shows that there will always be up-and-coming competitors who will out-hustle, out-engineer, and out-build the previous market dominators if they don't keep innovating and staying fresh. The smaller competitors, given enough time, will catch up.
[+] [-] tintin|14 years ago|reply
But I have to admit there are also a lot of useless copy-cat products on the market (not only in Asia). Those 'brands' will not survive because they won't offer an improvement.
[+] [-] SwellJoe|14 years ago|reply
Of course, one could make the argument that current first world countries will decline to the point where they can begin to compete on price just as the up-and-comers begin to charge more. It's already happening, to a limited degree, in autos. Some manufacturing has come back to the US in places where wages and taxes are low. The recent economic downturn has caused quite a few kinds of work to return to the US, including manufacturing that was taking place in China.
[+] [-] rhygar|14 years ago|reply
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2392106,00.asp
After all, they manufacture tons of components that go into these devices. It's not hard to take a part that someone else designed and stamp your own brand on it.
[+] [-] 6ren|14 years ago|reply
Presumably, an ARM-based solar netbook would have even longer battery life. But the (netbook) apps aren't there yet, and aren't coming, so they stay with x86 and Windows.
btw: the kindle, with passive E-ink, has 2 months battery (i.e. over x100 longer)
[+] [-] sorbus|14 years ago|reply
And my TI-84 has had the same batteries for at least two years (it's getting to the point that I'm starting to wonder when they're going to run out, since I know that it will be the worst possible time). It doesn't matter, it's an irrelevant comparison, unless you're saying that something more similar to the kindle would be better for developing regions where solar power is a major selling point (which is a really good thing to point out - why does a solar powered netbook need a 250GB HDD? Why not a small SSD, if that would save power?).
[+] [-] cjboco|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bakbak|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhygar|14 years ago|reply
I say: "Is there anything Samsung doesn't clone?"
This is shameless: http://9to5mac.com/2011/07/18/family-ties-earn-this-smart-co...
[+] [-] Kylekramer|14 years ago|reply