A Blog on Emerging Technologies

The total dominance back then….

Not much time has passed since Samsung was at the zenith of the Mobile phone market and there wasn’t any competition against it far and wide. The mobile handsets Samsung offered were truly dominating and gave an exclusiveness feeling to its users specifically to those who used Samsung flagship phones of Galaxy series. Samsung Galaxy was the same identity of the brand Samsung which iPhone has been to Apple. Galaxy M Series has a revival story for Samsung.

And the slide..

Fast forward a few years and suddenly Samsung found itself in the mid of stiff competition from Apple iPhones and cheap Chinese brands which were up against its market share. Samsung doesn’t seem to notice the dynamics of the market and the company conceded much of its ground to rival brands.

The Korean giant took a lot of time to realise the situation but by that time, the odds were already in favour of the Chinese brands and Samsung couldn’t do much for many years.

blessing in disguise….

Samsung may have run out of ideas to counter the situation and did nothing in mid of confusion.  Interestingly for Samsung, this ‘not doing much in time’ turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

In the highly competitive but lucrative market of mobile phones, it was found that not just Samsung, worldwide mobile phone manufacturers were facing the existential threat from Chinese manufacturers back then. These 10 years have been the years of a seachange in mobile phone technology. Remember the names like Micromax, Spice, Zolo, Karbonn and so many names which have become history now. Chinese finished almost every small company with much of ease.

The Chinese onslaught…

Unlike Samsung, these small mobile phone manufacturers timely realised the Chinese onslaught and they tried their best to avoid the inevitable. The Chinese always had advantages. The rest of the brands simply couldn’t match the technological prowess of Chinese companies as Chinese were able to offer their products very cheap with a satisfactory set of features while the rest of the players failed to deliver and parished one after another over time.

The biggest challenge which these companies faced before elimination was a staggering rate of change of phone technology. By the time these companies accommodated themselves with a new thing happening in mobile technology, the technology already migrated to a newer and advanced version of existing features.

The ‘do nothing’ thing…

Sometimes the best thing to do against an onslaught like this is to do nothing at all. You do nothing. You just wait and watch and chances are that you will get your chance.

Samsung exactly did the same; deliberately or unintentionally. They weathered the Chinese slaughter somehow. Today, mobile phone technology is quite predictable and matured enough with only a few players left. Samsung is here with a new strategy. They are stable and confident and it appears they have a strategy finally. 

The recuperation with Galaxy M Series…

Samsung has launched an array of mobile phones to take on with Chinese companies. It is a well-known fact that Samsung has a far respectable name than of a Mi or Honor or for that matter, any Chinese name.  Samsung never offloaded a cheap phone with loads of features like the Chinese did. For a long time and for the same features, Samsung stood for brand value at a high price and took enough beating from Chinese and iPhone equally for pricing and exclusiveness respectively.

But not anymore. Samsung has launched some mobile phones which have powerful features at a relatively low price. The world seems loving it.

 This way the company is regaining it’s lost ground. This is because people are inclining more to Samsung for its brand name than Chinese brands. Chinese are historically notorious in quality aspect. Despite improvement, those are not valued so high for the same set of features in a phone. Being a non-Chinese brand is also helping.

And the happy ending…

That is why some of the Samsung phones are doing extremely well, especially from the M series of Galaxy; where it is successfully taking on with Chinese cheap brands. Samsung has joined the fray for a market share of exclusive brands of phones. With Galaxy S series models, Samsung is ready to retake its premium phone segment.

As said earlier, the right strategy sometimes is just to wait and watch. Samsung is just one latest case of it.