Why Samsung Wants The Next iPhone To Succeed
Why Samsung Wants The Next iPhone To Succeed:- One of the interesting things I learned when I visited LG’s headquarters in Seoul last month was that the company’s display division made OLED panels for Apple, yet not for LG’s own phones. It seems weird, right? LG’s phones are trying to thrive in a market dominated by the iPhone, yet the South Korean company contributes to Apple’s products over its own? And although this is “just a rumor” at this point (though a very reliable one), all sources say Samsung will provide the curved OLED panels for the next iPhone, probably named the iPhone 8.
Yup, the biggest draw for next year’s tenth-anniversary iPhone — “look at our courage in making this all glass curved iPhone,” some Apple dude will probably say this fall — is made by Samsung. But why are these South Korean companies helping Apple? Particularly Samsung, whose phones have battled iPhones for dominance for the past few years? Media sure love to eat up the iPhone vs Galaxy narrative — heck, Forbes even has a hashtag dedicated to this topic.
The reason is because Samsung is a huge, huge conglomerate with a ridiculously sprawling empire — it’s got its own baseball team and theme park, for example — mobile phones are just a small portion of the pie.
In fact, despite the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco costing Samsung a reported $5 billion, Samsung still turned a profit of $7.76 billion, the biggest quarterly profit in more than three years, according to a very informative and great report by the Wall Street Journal (which I recommend you click to read). The reason for Samsung’s growth is because its OLED panels are so in demand. In addition to Apple, Dell, HP and even Sony turn to Samsung for its brilliant high-contrast, true-black screens.
While smartphone lovers such as myself, and many other tech sites, focus on mobile phones mostly and believe that Samsung and Apple are constantly at each other’s throats, the reality is the big picture makes the mobile battle seem puny. Especially since the smartphone market is so saturated — seriously, there’s like a new phone out every three weeks — that global smartphone growth has slowed significantly.
According to research firm IDC, global smartphone shipments growth dropped to just 1% in 2016, compared to 47% in 2012. That means even if the Note 7 didn’t flame out, even if it was the success it was supposed to be, Samsung would have made much more money from OLED panels than phones anyway.
Source:-Â http://www.forbes.com/sites/bensin/2017/01/06/why-samsung-wants-the-next-iphone-to-succeed/#497915584223
