With the smartphone market shrinking, Samsung has been feeling the pinch. Profits for the 3rd quarter were the worst in three years (49% drop), and it can only continue to deteriorate unless drastic changes are made. Apple introduced iPhones with bigger displays, which was probably the biggest differentiating factor for the past couple of years. That, and the fact that cheaper phones were being launched in India and China, have made it difficult for the Korean tech giant.
During an earnings conference call, Samsung investor relations head Robert Yi said they were “not quick enough” to the changing market conditions. Now they seek more efficiency in their product portfolio, which can be translated to a lower number of handsets. Samsung has always offered more handsets than any company, but that needs to be changed immediately.
Now it isn't all doom and gloom for Samsung as they are still the leading global smartphone manufacturer. However, in looking at the top 5 manufacturers, all but Samsung showed at least 15% growth. Those companies were Apple, Xiaomi, Lenovo, and LG. Samsung can still make the changes necessary to retain the top, but they will have to move fast.
If Samsung put the majority of their concentration on the Galaxy S series, Note series, and only one or two budget devices, they might be able to reverse the course. However, it's going to take more innovation. It's a proven fact that the majority of consumers don't care about their proprietary software. Samsung's rise to the top was due to heavy marketing, but they also capitalized on the fact that Apple was so behind in making phones with larger displays. With that advantage gone, Samsung is going to need to create devices that will force consumers to stick with them. They can do it. Look at the Galaxy Note 4. It's is one of the best phones of the year. Keep making devices like that, and they have a shot at staying at the top of the mountain.
source: The Guardian
Older Samsungs rooted with CM are better than the newest ones that come out with Touchwiz. I have an S4 with Slimrom on it and spec wise I wont need another phone until this one completely breaks. I know plenty of others in the same boat, so them bringing out 10 phones a year doesn’t help them. I wonder what sales they would get if they brought out a phone next year that ran stock cm.
Yet another article written be a person who does not understand that the phone is not only about the hardware but also about the software. The Note4 is great hardware but why should I buy it if the first thing I will have to do is to root it and install a custom rom. And guess what goes with the warranty then. touchwiz is an unusable crap. Samsung put so much effort with Tizen which was a fail from the beginning and hasn’t improved the software (or even made it worse) for their main line of phones their revenue is based on. Clean, plain android based ROM is still better than what Samsung does.
One more nice thing about Samsung’s ROM DPI settings/touchwiz design is that it looks its target are our grandparents as everything on the screen seems twice too large. You could of course change the dpi (which will break the design of a few apps) in android properties when rooted but again your warranty is gone.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that > 90% of people that buy the Note 4 will not be rooting and ROMing the device. You’ve still got plenty of people that either enjoy TouchWiz or just don’t mind it. That’s not the issue that Samsung is running into here.
I know a lot of people who owned Samsung devices. Mostly they were complaining about the software quality and the slowness of the device after some time. As I work in the IT I see that almost all people from the IT change the original ROM on Samsung devices because they know how to do it and can compare the difference which is huge (on my old note2 I got about 50% speed boost on basic apps like contacts, phone, message). In my opinion it’s not about people don’t mind but about their lack of knowledge. They see phone reviews which are 90% hardware based and go for 2mega pixels more rather than look at the software comparison. Most people won’t use the camera a few times a day but they will use the software daily. Don’t know if you have noticed but when you have a lot of contacts f.e. the original samsung contact app will hang for 3 secs on switching between apps (the same on galaxy 3/4 and on note2/3, haven’t compared on note4) and the contact app is usually the app you will definitely use because samsung somehow designed the contact and the phone app separately (you can see that even on a new phone when turning on all animations).
Again Note4’s hardware is great but it’s not about the better hardware anymore. Nowadays almost all average phones have good hardware.
On screen buttons and limit bloatware would be good start