Showing posts with label Amazon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amazon. Show all posts

Saturday, January 05, 2013

Samsung: Top Tech Company



If Google has the best apps on the iPhone and Samsung's next smartphone leaves the iPhone in the dust, then is Samsung among the great tech companies of today?

The Fifth Horsemen: Samsung
We all know the “four horsemen” of tech: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google .... Microsoft simply no longer belongs on that list. .... there’s an omission that’s becoming a glaring one: Samsung. .... Samsung is not an American company (it’s South Korean). Nor did it start as a scrappy technology startup that set out to change the world (it started in 1938 as a local produce trading company). Nor does it operate like an American technology company (the entire company is and has been run largely by one family .... Samsung isn’t even just a technology company .... there’s a decent chance that it will end up being the most important tech company of 2013. .... Samsung is by far the most important Android partner. Not only does it dominate from a market share perspective, it’s really the only Android OEM that is actually making any money. .... posted about $155 billion in revenue in 2011. That’s almost exactly the amount of revenue that Apple posted in 2012. Samsung should come in closer to $190 billion when its fiscal 2012 comes to a close. .... $100 billion for Amazon, Facebook, and Google in 2012 ..... unlike Amazon and Facebook which make little or no profit, Samsung is hugely profitable. $12 billion in profit for 2011 should move closer to $20 billion in 2012. That’s not a ton compared to Apple ($55 billion in profit in 2012), but it should be roughly twice as much profit as Google pulls in for the year. ..... it is the most important piece of the Android ecosystem beyond Google. And it seems that the company is at least exploring the possibility of taking a step back from that ecosystem, or hedging its bet. That could be the story of 2013 ..... Samsung must be looking at how profitable Apple is as a result of its total control. .... Beyond mobile devices, the hot topic for 2013 is the future of television. .... And Samsung isn’t stopping with phones and televisions (or memory chips and flat-panel displays where it is also the global leader). Chairman Lee Kun Hee recently gave a speech to employees underscoring the need to venture into new businesses. The son of the man who started the produce trading company knows that the future of his company will be products that don’t even exist today.
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Monday, December 24, 2012

Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook: Coalition Partners


Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook. True, these are the tech giants at the cutting edge, and it is but natural that they might have turf wars - good for the consumer - but I still see it as them working together to eat up more and more of the traditionally offline action. More and more advertising will move to the digital realm. More and more searching will happen online. More and more buying will happen online. More and more socializing will have online components.


Analysis: Amazon, Google on collision course in 2013
Lurking in the shadows for both Google and Amazon is Facebook with its own search and advertising ambitions. .... "Amazon wants to be the one place where you buy everything. Google wants to be the one place where you find everything, of which buying things is a subset.... So when you marry those facts I think you're going to see a natural collision." .... 96 percent of Google's $38 billion in 2011 sales came from advertising. ..... But Amazon's newly developed "DSP" technology, which taps into the company's vast store of consumer purchase history to help marketers target ads at specific groups of people on Amazon.com and on other websites, could change all that. ... "From a client's perspective, the data that Amazon owns is actually better than what Google has.....They know what you just bought, and they also know what you are right now trying to buy." ..... By showing ads for products that it may not actually sell on its own website, Amazon establishes itself as a starting point for consumers looking to buy something on the Web.

Can Google Challenge Apple Without Apple's Manufacturing Prowess?
Steve Jobs did the marketing pizazz, it was Cook who really built that chain capable of churning out tens of millions of pieces of a new product in the first quarter after release. ..... They can actually execute on a large scale out there in the physical world.

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Monday, October 15, 2012

Patent Wars Are Death, Agreed

Image representing Eric Schmidt as depicted in...
Image by Charles Haynes via CrunchBase
But Google was a pacifist in the Apple-Samsung battle. Was there any doubt that was a proxy fight with Google?

Eric Schmidt: Android-Apple Is the Defining Fight in the Industry Today
“These patent wars are death,” Schmidt said, noting that software is always overlapping, and that there are an estimated 200,000 patents covering the software industry. Schmidt said the impact is worse for small companies than it is for companies like Apple, Google and Samsung that can afford to protect their technolopgies. “I think this is ultimately bad, bad for innovation. It eliminates choices.” ..... “Facebook is attempting to become the world’s communications hub, and Amazon is attempting to become the world’s largest store.” .... Shouldn’t Microsoft be included in there, Mossberg asked? No, Schmidt said. “It’s a well-run company,” he said, “but they don’t make state-of-the-art products.”
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