06 November 2013

Apple for the day

Youkyung Lee has a Time article about Samsung's tablet delusions:
Samsung Electronics Co. has a new goal after overtaking Apple in smartphones: it wants to be number one in tablet computers too.
A top executive, Shin Jong-kyun, told analysts recently that Samsung’s tablet business is growing rapidly, and the company will become the biggest maker of tablet computers. He didn’t give a timeframe. Shin said Samsung’s tablet sales will exceed forty million units this year, more than double sales in 2012. “Samsung tablet shipments started to grow remarkably since the second half of last year,” he said.
Research group IDC estimates that Samsung sold 16.6 million tablets in 2012, lagging far behind Apple Inc., which sold 65.7 million iPads.
But Samsung is on the rise, capturing twenty percent market share in the July-to-September quarter, while Apple, which led the commercialization of tablet computing, fell to thirty percent. Apple had previously more than half of the global tablet market, but its dominance has eroded as Samsung boosted sales with cheaper Galaxy Tab computers that offer many different screen sizes.
The same trend has already played out in smartphones. Apple transformed the mobile phone industry when it started selling the iPhone in 2007, but its success was quickly imitated, and Samsung’s smartphone shipments surpassed Apple’s iPhone sales in 2011. The following year, the South Korean company became the largest supplier of mobile handsets overall, surpassing Nokia.
Shin’s speech was part of Samsung’s first event tailored for analysts and investors since 2005 as the South Korean company tries to boost its share price, which has flagged despite a string of record profits. Responding to pressure to increase returns to investors, Chief Financial Officer Lee Sang-hoon said Samsung plans to double its dividend this year to the equivalent of one percent of the average price of its common shares. Samsung also said it plans to adopt outside technologies and hire talent through aggressive acquisitions.
Kwon Oh-hyun, the company’s vice chairman, said Samsung wants to be the top medical device maker through acquiring companies and developing its own technologies. In the last three years, Samsung spent a billion dollars to buy fourteen companies in medical equipment, mobile software, and services. The event failed to boost investor confidence immediately. Shares of Samsung closed just over two percent lower in Seoul.
Rico says yeah, like that'll happen... (But, hey, if you really want to own a Korean POS, you should be able to.)

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