Samsung has good hardware, but their software is really mediocre, at best. Many of their devices are laggy and slow down further after some updates.
This is the case even on high-end devices. Our 12-month-old Galaxy Tab is slower than a 7-year-old Pixel. Hard to understand.
Plus, they make really odd tweaks to the UI, such as adding a permanent button overlay that clashes with most hamburger icons in websites and apps. This drives novice users insane.
Samsung makes a lot of cheap and mid-tier devices with little RAM and not so powerful SoCs. Google also uses slow SoCs, but at least they compensate in hardware.
If you just buy a high-end phone, Samsung is generally fine. If you buy anything cheaper than that, or god forbid buy a phone through a carrier that pumps it full of crap, you're gonna have a terrible time when apps get slower and bulkier and shittier and the hardware shows its age.
Odd. I've had the Z Fold 5 and now 7 and the last few years' worth of Samsung firmware has been excellent for me. Perhaps they build 'for' their flagships and let devices that perhaps have lower tier chipsets run slowly?
Similarly for TVs - i got a samsung oled few years ago, and while the hardware seems great, I do wish I had gone with LG as their TVs seem more open to install custom firmware. (I do pretty much just use appleTV and fireTV devices plugged in to the Samsung, but still, the main TV ui is pretty abysmal)
They have been shipping the same camera block for something like three or four models. Compared to what Chinese competitors like Xiaomi or Oppo offer, it doesn't look that great anymore.
On top of buggy software they just have user hostile design choices. Like forcing agreements to sell health data if you want a step counter, or shoving ads in your face that you can't disable without hamstringing functionality.
Makes me think about switching if alternative markets really do come to iOS and they get a real firefox
The status bar icons on the top right of One UI (Samsung's firmware skin) aren't even aligned or the same size. It's only just been fixed in One UI 8.5, years from the problem first happening.
You're welcome if you can't unsee it now.
It's nothing major, but it's one example of how inconsistent and disorganised their software is, there's so much low hanging fruit that you'd think their software division was under duress, along with year long delays to software updates.
As much as I wish it wasn't the case, not being able to bootloader unlock is not a cause of any meaningful reduction in sales. The Android ROM community has been on life support for a few years now.
I recently got a Samsung device for testing, and the experience was terrible. It took three hours to get the device into a usable state.
First, it essentially forces you to create both a Samsung account and a Google account, with numerous shady prompts for "improving services" and "allowing targeted ads."
Then it required nine system updates (apparently, it can only update incrementally), and worst of all, after a while, it automatically started downloading bloatware like "Kawai" and other questionable apps, and you cannot cancel the downloads.
I wonder how much Samsung gets paid to preinstall all that crap. The phone wasn't cheap, either. The company seems penny wise and pound foolish.
> Sales of the iPhone 17 series in the U.S. — including the iPhone Air — during the first four weeks after launch was 12% higher than that of the iPhone 16 series, excluding the iPhone 16e, the research firm said. In China, a critical market for Apple, sales of the iPhone 17 series during the same period were 18% higher than its predecessor.
So iPhone 17 is selling well. I think it's fair to call it a hit. Do they make another hit next year? Who knows (I'd bet against it), but they won this year's game I believe.
The rumors say Apple is shipping their folding phone next year, I'm crossing my fingers that one might have stylus support and then it'll meander its way back to the regular phones.
I'm in the same boat. Although I would also be willing to go back to Apple if they release a truly small phone.
But I'm forced to carry one of these gigantic beasts I want to be able to take (handwritten) notes with it.
That's because Samsung's new offerings are trash compared to where we were a few years ago. I have the S24 Ultra and in my opinion it's better than the S25 ultra. The camera, the features, maybe it's better built for AI but I don't want Samsung's garbage AI on my phone. Even the new S-Pen loses features to the old one (one of the main features I used too, the remote shutter).
The Object Eraser feature recently updated to have an "AI Object Eraser" and now a simple removal of a sign in my picture adds an "AI Generated" watermark onto it. They spam me every time I use the regular Object Eraser to try the AI one, it's really not impressive in any way and now adds a watermark even for the simplest modifications.
Definitely all around seems like Samsung is on a decline. I probably won't be buying a Samsung next time I need a phone, though I won't be buying Apple either.
> Definitely all around seems like Samsung is on a decline. I probably won't be buying a Samsung next time I need a phone, though I won't be buying Apple either.
Same here, used to have a Samsung, moved to Moto G which was the best phone I had so far, currently on a iPhone 12 Mini, and want none of these phones anymore. I just want something that doesn't get in your way, and actually have some well-thought UX, especially when connected to the car. CarPlay is a whole dumpster-fire of failed UX experiments it feels like, is actively dangerous, and iOS in general have so many hidden patterns I'm still discovering today (guessing they also add new gestures all the time) that it feels like I only understand 20% of the phone's features.
Someone recommended me Sony for Android + higher quality hardware, where the company also doesn't seem hellbent on screwing you over inside the phone OS itself. What do people here with Sony phones think about them?
> feels like I only understand 20% of the phone's features
This is a persistent problem with iOS. Features are added but not really mentioned. The online manual is very focused on "how do I..." without giving a clear overview of "here's everything you can do. New gestures are added without giving an obvious way to reverse them if you accidentally trigger one.
I belong to one demography of ex Samsung customers:
I've blacklisted them for hurting UX to show ads.
Last device: my very high-end OLED TV has the worst menu navigation, just to take me back to the home screen where they hoped to show ads to me.
Once I realized they are analysing my content, even when coming from an external device to send home for ADs, I just disconnected it from the internet.
I'll not buy anything again unless they change this and stay away from it long enough to repair the damage to trust.
Not buying an Apple device either, but for different reasons.
Put an AppleTV in front of it and use it like a monitor. I’ve been blissfully unaware of the TV vendors’ bad software and invasions of privacy for years
The only apple product I ever bought has been an ipad with the huge disappointment that every app gets paused when not focused. I don't want to pay a company that deliberately limits my ability to use the product. My TV is being used as a second 4k 144hz monitor for my Fedora 43 + KDE on AMD CPU and Nvidia GPU, watch movies on it, play games, etc, and don't have to put up with limitations of Apple ecosystem.
So every quarter this year except the last quarter, Samsung outsold Apple. So they're predicting that Q42025 for Samsung will be miserable sales or Apple will have skyrocketed sales?
The iPhone 17 (released in September) is selling extremely well, and Apple sales tend to be concentrated in Q4 due to the new phone (and the holidays, though those should also affect Samsung).
Well, Samsung chose for example to stop supporting micro SD cards. Samsung just keeps chasing Apple, so I don't see any point to buy their phones anymore.
The only unique selling point Samsung has left I can think of are foldable phones.
So dark patterns to increase peer pressure and hard vendor lock in work then: exploiting networking effects and social pressure like green vs. blue bubbles, technically unnecessary hard requirements for other devices that are locked into the same garden prison, random compatibility restrictions/omissions in built in apps etc.
Apple really is far from innocent. They just pull their customers over the table in such a smooth way that it feels like nest warmth to them.
I got tired of Android after 9 years of being Android only. I just wanted a phone that worked. Apple made said phone. Android feels like your younger cousin's sketchy Windows computer. I remember changing from like 2 different Android phones over a period of 4 years or so, and my amazing megapixel photos looked nowhere near as good as my cousins 5-year-old iPhone photos.
I switched to IPhone 13 pro 3.5 years ago and I have the completely opposite experience.
It doesn’t “just work”.
- Swipe typing is so horrible I had to disable it.
- Notifications are extremely large and you have less control over what type of notifications you want to receive.
- You can’t transfer files by simply connecting your phone to a PC.
- Videos played in Safari don’t automatically rotate to landscape mode (nor there is a button to quickly do this) unless you disable portrait lock from control center. If you lock this again hoping it will stay in landscape it will switch back to portrait mode.
- You can’t set alarm on a certain date.
- You can only snooze the alarm for 9 minutes (I think you can configure this in iOS26, but this was unacceptable even 5 years ago)
- Apps get killed or stopped in background extremely frequently which means that if you have some long running task you need to keep the app open.
- Hotspot automatically disconnects even with a Macbook (Windows/Linux is much worse). I used to live without home internet relying on hotspot feature. IPhone hotspot proved to be extremely unreliable.
This is not even mentioning more technical things like sideloading, torrent client etc.
I have some alarms for specific dates, do you mean a single use alarm?
> - You can only snooze the alarm for 9 minutes (I think you can configure this in iOS26, but this was unacceptable even 5 years ago)
To this day I miss one alarm that LG phones had where it would make me do more work to even dismiss it, on purpose, because I am known to just turn it off and keep sleeping.
> - Hotspot automatically disconnects even with a Macbook (Windows/Linux is much worse). I used to live without home internet relying on hotspot feature. IPhone hotspot proved to be extremely unreliable.
I have not had this issue, though I did have the issue of not realizing that since I had bought my phone through Apple instead of through T-Mobile my data / hotspot plan was not the right one, I realized this after I left T-Mobile for Mint, but I rarely if ever use hotspot.
> - Swipe typing is so horrible I had to disable it.
I had the 12 Pro and now the 17 Pro, I rarely do swipe typing, voice to text is slightly more annoying, I would hope that in this world of AI that Apple would improve their voice to text, it just doesn't hear me at all half of the time.
> - You can’t transfer files by simply connecting your phone to a PC.
Apple has always been all about being on Apple, so yeah, though I have gotten my Linux to mount files from the iPhone before, doesn't look pretty at all mind you, but I can take a rough but full snapshot of all my images on my phone..
> I have some alarms for specific dates, do you mean a single use alarm?
Are you using a third party app, or the built in Clock/Alarm?
The built in clock alarm lets you set alarms for specific days ("Repeat -> Never / Every {Monday..Sunday}"), but doesn't let you set alarms for specific dates (Set my alarm for 6am on Wednesday 10th and Monday 29th)
> > - Hotspot automatically disconnects even with a Macbook (Windows/Linux is much worse). I used to live without home internet relying on hotspot feature. IPhone hotspot proved to be extremely unreliable.
This happens to me frequently when I switched to using my phone hotspot as my primary internet connection for a week. My solution ended up being getting a dedicated AP, and having that connect to my phone instead. A random Netgear running OpenWRT was able to more reliably stay tethered to my Apple iPhone than my Apple Macbook or Apple iPad. It's ironic when inter-vendor works better than intra-vendor.
> > - You can’t transfer files by simply connecting your phone to a PC.
> Apple has always been all about being on Apple, so yeah, though I have gotten my Linux to mount files from the iPhone before, doesn't look pretty at all mind you, but I can take a rough but full snapshot of all my images on my phone..
That's about all I can do with Windows PC, Linux PC, or Mac too. Transfer photos. If I want to transfer arbitrary files by connecting to USB and browsing a filesystem (e.g. everything that Files.app displays in "On my iPhone" view), I can't on any platform.
The only time my wife has been jealous of someone elses photos was when my mother in law got a new iPhone and we were five years into ours, far longer than I ever held on an Android phone for.
Not really? All Samsung phones that we owned were at least as good - with the exception of a phone that we bought from a US carrier. The carrier mods on that one phone were total shit. But these modifications are entirely avoidable by buying an unlocked phone.
Apple is the most profitable company in the smartphone business and, while their "unit sales" or market share accounts for only about 20%, Apple's share of the smartphone industry's profit is about 80+%.
If what you mean by "smartphone business" is neither unit sales nor services, I'd really need you to point at some specific report to understand what we're talking about.
>However, it outperformed a struggling smartphone market in terms of shipment, revenue and operating profit growth, in turn achieving its highest-ever shares of 18%, 48% and 85% in these metrics respectively, in 2022.
I have a Samsung Galaxy and their build quality is still pretty solid especially compared to the Chinese brands (I'm grateful Samsung didn't copy their ugly camera bumps) but the battery size is mediocre and the software is somehow worse than all the Chinese iOS clones.
Samsung is quite hesitant to hop onto the silicon carbon battery train. I guess they are more conservative after the burning battery debacle a few years ago, but still, I look over at those juicy 7000+ kWh phone batteries and I wants it.
Round here many people think there are only two manufacturers of phones: Apple and Samsung. You'll struggle to find someone who isn't "in to tech" who has heard of Pixel. I've never had a Samsung but use Android and numerous people have referred to my phone as "a Samsung". So it's a stronger brand than you might think.
Well huawei ban bought samsung sometime, scared PRC brands from expanding into north american market. TBH Samsung was still pretty dominant until PRC brands really turned dial on hardware while Samsung stagnated until they couldn't. The latest round of hardware is pretty good, as in PRC flagship parity worthy. TBH the Koreans are very talented, they don't have the numbers to keep up with PRC speed / product cycles, but if they can iterate proper flagship every other year, they'd be in a good place. Also not putting ads on fridges.
Sure, I'm actually old enough to remember Huawei's Ascend sold under MetroPCS in the US back in the early 2010's. Leica collaboration with Huawei in 2016 worked wonders and other Chinese smartphone makers definitely stepped up, but, by this time, Samsung's China sales fell off the cliff by ~70+% to a low single-digit market share from its 20% peak in 2013 under Xi's "In China, For China" campaign.
Not sure if Huawei was ever a threat to Samsung or Apple outside China as most of Huawei's growth was in China only and there was no other single major market in which Huawei came close to Apple's or Samsung's. China is also the only major market where Samsung's market share is less than 1% and I'm very disinclined to believe this is coincidence. I think the common misconception is that Samsung was "outcompeted" by Huawei when it was in fact forced out of China. This practice became quite common in other industries too after Xi -- eg, all foreign competitors in EV batteries business such as LG, Panasonic, Samsung, etc were also effectively banned in China under Xi's Made-In-China 2025, launched in 2015 to protect local "champions," such as CATL/BYD.
Samsung share was dropping in PRC before Xi, i.e. when cheap domestic brands started eating the bottom. Samsung flagship was still popular, i.e. the low single digit highend, then the Note battery recall drama happend and basically THAAD right after and the double whammy basically killed Samsung in PRC. Now do I think Samsung could have recovered and held on like Apple with domestic competition, probably not, samsung not as sticky as life style choice.
Before Huawei sanction global shipments went from 100m to 200m in like 4 years (double digit YoY growth) while samsung was declining from 300m in same time period. Everyone saw which way the trend lines was going, especially in HW flagships.
MIC2025 is like for establishing nascent industries, i.e. your batteries example. PRC companies get whitelist/subsidies for a few years then opens to foreign players after CATL becomes incumbant. Samsung mobile doesn't fit MIC2025 pattern since PRC already established phone manufacturing before MIC2025 started, entire low&high spectrum by 2015. It's not some strategic industry being spun up from 0, they already knew everything about phone production from Foxconn. There's no reason to force Samsung out of PRC, domestic phones already got CATLized and was outcompeting Samsung by then. Also it's not like Samsung was formally "kicked out", they left after seeing same writing on the wall. If Samsung got kicked out, like even informally, there'd be transition plan, i.e. get a local player to take over Huizhou company seen in other MIC2025 plays. Factories don't sit idle. Instead Samsung picked up and left and basically Huizhou become ghost towned.
>> Samsung share was dropping in PRC before Xi, ... the Note battery recall drama happend and basically THAAD right after ... <<
Sure, except that narrative has too many flaws. Samsung China's smartphone sales increased from 11M in 2011, to 30M in 2012, to about 60+M in 2013 -- no such "drop" before Xi's rise. Then it cratered as Xi's anti-foreign "In China, For China" policy went in full swing. By 2016, Samsung's China sales figure was already down to just over 10M -- the Note 7 and THAAD were likewise inconsequential and Samsung smartphone sales continued to slide in China and China only. During this time between 2016-2017, Samsung's global sales continued to maintain its lead at around 310M even as its Chinese competitors, such as Huawei struggle against Samsung outside China without protection from Xi. Again, this conspicuous drop was in China only and there was no sudden change in consumer preference or product offering, as evident from Samsung's global sales -- ie, while Samsung China sales was down, it was up elsewhere. Xi's mercantile policies and the rising nationalism in China were the only changing variables.
Also it wasn't just Samsung alone either -- Apple was the next major foreign smartphone seller in China.
Apple avoided Samsung's fate after Xi's rise in 2013 and Patrick McGee, a FT reporter, has recently released
Apple in China: the Capture of the World's Greatest Company, meticulously detailing how Apple countered Xi's "For China, In China," but, by doubling down on China, Apple is in effect "captured" by Xi. see Chapter 26 "Despot" and on.
Looking at sales in 2010s mobile growth market is flawed. look at market share. 2010-2015 was mass smart phone proliferation, the demand denominator was expanding so companies can sell more phones while lose relative marketshare. Samsung PRC share peaked and started dropping right before/around when Xi entered office, i.e. domestic (budget) champions was grown before Xi, they were outcompeted before MIC2025 or battery/thaad drama. Samsung global sales stalled at ~300m and started dipping below (i.e. losing total sales and market share in growth market), again need to look at market share because denominator of global phone sales was exploding. Samsung Could had 40/50% of global sales 500m+ branded sales, instead Huawei+others jumped in and ate big chunk of Android pie, i.e. actual global Android shipments was like 1B, PRC brands including white labeled OEMs captured probably 50%+ of that. Huawei going from 0-200m phone sales abroad while Samsung stalling and even declining at ~300m when they had 500m+ to capture isn't Huawei struggling (aging double digit global YoY growth at the time), it's PRC brands gobbling up new demand at expense of Samsung. Samsung got short term boost after HW ban, then started stagnating again when budget PRC brands went flagship. Also there was huge change in product offering 2010-2015s in PRC, that's when domestic budget brands and then flagships proliferated. There's nothing sudden about any of this, Xi barely had any time in office to engineer some mass buy domestic movement, that only happened late 2010s across variety of domestic sectors.
Patrick McGee / Apple in China is motivated writing. Trying to sell narrative Apple taught PRC everything they instead of you know 100,000s PRC tooling engineers and manufacturing specialistists trying to troubleshoot and scale Apple design. I don't know what Chapter 26 has to do with anything, IIRC it's mostly PRC making Apple kneel to PRC soveign internet, aka follow doemstic laws and Apple complied because they need PRC manufacturing. And doing so let Apple kept their share in PRC for another 20 years which wasn't bad return. And it's not even like Samsung left PRC, they had to pivot back to PRC ODMs (wingtech, huaqin) for ~100 of millions of low end devices (I htink the As and Ms) shortly after.
>> look at market share. Samsung PRC share peaked and started dropping right before/around when Xi entered office ... <<
Sure, you could use either metrics, but it shows the same thing: Samsung China's market share in 2012 was 17.7% (30M). Xi came to power in mid 2013 and Samsung's sales in each quarter 2013 were 18% (12.5M) in Q1, 19% (15M) Q2, 18% (17M) Q3, and 19% Q4 -- ie, it's a steady YoY growth, in relative % or absolute terms.
In other words, Samsung's sales were not affected by local competition "right before" or "around" Xi. Only after Xi's "In China, For China," both market share and absolute sales plunged from 17.7% (2012), to 19% (2013) to 7.9% (2014) or 31M (2012), to 70M (2013) to 35M (2014).
Again, this was isolated to China and as a result of Xi's anti-foreign policy in China only -- Samsung's sales continue to grow outside China to maintain their global lead.
Further, I cited McGee's recent excellent work which clearly demonstrates how Xi's anti-foreign policies suddenly changed business climate in China against foreign competitors -- which starts at Part 5: Political Awakening, Chapter 26 -- why it has everything to do with "The DESPOT." Not market competition, or THAAD/Note 7 fire.
Your theory doesn't work in real world timeline where we have to factor in actual execution time. Also it simply doesn't match actual policy history. Xi doesn't get to flip switch and conjure a bunch of domestic phone brands and shift market share within a few quarters. That stuff takes years, not suddenly. Hence on/around. The fact that Samsung peaked right when Xi entered office means Xi was not causative since Xi wouldn't have any time to implement buy domestic policy, which also didn't exist at the time. Market share changes work on multi year lag, for Samsung shares to decline, it requires Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo etc to have build out manufacturing years prior, i.e. before Xi.
Samsung global sales stagnated few years later and saw some decline in the same period as Huawei was doing double digit global YoY growth - again factor in actual market lag of PRC companies cornering domestic market before going abroad. Then HW got knee capped by export controls. Now maybe HW might not have surpassed Samsung but it's pretty clear Samsung wasn't growing while PRC brands were, while none sanctioned brands continue to chip away at Samsung (i.e. this article).
Either way, claiming there was some anti foreign policy in 2013 simply doesn't comport with reality because we have paperwork of Xi's actual year 1 policies, there wasn't any anti-foreign or buy domestic initiatives. Hence I don't see the relevance of McGee regardless. I think chapter talks about political awakening to PRC business climate not any mobile sector industrial substitution policies (which again, did not exist).
PRC telling Apple to follow PRC laws, i.e. cloud sovereignty isn't anti foreign it's just forcing foreign companies to compete on same requirements as domestic companies like data localization. That happeneing in 2013 was part of broader cybersecurity/ideological work, i.e. the institution work stuff that applied to domestic and foreign companies. Actual MIC2025 related industrial policy didn't happen until years later. Procedurally Xi's first year focused on corruption/CCDI, institutional stuff, there wasn't any industrial policy like MIC until a year later, like 3rd plenum was in December 2013. Xi wasn't going around telling domestic consumers to stop buying Samsung phones or kicking Samsung out of the country. Otherwise Samsung again, wouldn't have freely returned to PRC to partner with PRC ODMs for low end lines that they realize even PRC has cost advantage on vs Vietnam. Incidientally the same cost advantage that made PRC / global consumers buy from affordable PRC brands in the first place.
>> Your theory doesn't work in real world timeline where we have to factor in actual execution time. ... That stuff takes years,
(no "reply" button in your last comment)
Sure, doesn't really matter. I just have to demonstrate that your "local competition" theory in pre-Xi era doesn't hold water and the real world data don't bear that out, which I already have.
Whether Samsung China's sudden sales collapse came 1 day, or 1 year after Xi? not very relevant. That being said, in Apple's case, the Chinese media's coordinated attack started on Consumer Day in March 2013, just a day after Xi became president, but because of Apple's quick response and bold risky bet, suffered no damage. Samsung China's first sales decline since 2009 on the other hand became evident in Q1 2014 and after, or some 3 quarters after Xi. Or roughly equal to a 50% drop in market share and unit sales for the entire year 2014 and more significant drops in subsequent years. So we are talking 4+ years to go from 20% to less than 1%, so there goes your timeline arg out the window, too -- it's plenty time to implement informal anti-market policies and destroy a foreign competitor completely.
Again, this dramatic drop was not seen elsewhere, but in only China, indicating that the problem wasn't inherent to Samsung's product offering, competitiveness, or market. In open markets, such as EU, Samsung maintained a steady ~32+% market share post-Xi and wasn't affected at all by the rise or fall of Huawei, before or after the ban. Samsung EU's market share dipped below 30% in 2021 for the first time in 8+ years, after Huawei's ban which further undermines the narrative that Samsung somehow benefited from it.
Real world data bares out that local competition theory holds. You've demonstrated questionable ability to intrepret data in real world context. Of course it's relevant when Samsung sales collapse happens if it happens in time period where policy changes (which again does not exist) simply could not have effect. The fact that collapse happened when Xi cannot have causative effect means Xi's policies (or lack of) was not responsible. If Xi entered office, made policy to kill Samsung, and 4-5 years later PRC built up domestic mobile players to do so, then sure. But those players already existed and had scaling plans to supplant Samsung domestically pre Xi. Samsung markshare dropping in subsequent years was because domestic PRC brands who built factories pre Xi started doing their natural scaling hence execution years prior to Xi resulted in capturing more marketshare in subsequent years, which entirely comports with timeline. Your theory also simply doesn't comport on the fundmental level that there weren't any anti-market policies in smart phone domain, because it was mature domain where pre Xi PRC competitors were already in place. Anti-market policies was for nacent industries, i.e. MIC2025.
Dramatic drop was seen first in PRC then globally which fits customary trend of PRC players establishing in PRC first then expand globally. We have global data that Samsung sales went from stalling to negative while Huawei scaling as global player to rising after Huawei ban, i.e. Samsung share went from stalling to jumping to 40% in EU after Huawei ban from 30%. Like this is all very well established history, there's no need to entertain alternative / revisionist theories when plenty of market analysis at the time already discussed Huawei eating lunch of Samsung and Apple pre ban while Samsung being primarily benefitiary of HW ban. And again it entire avoids the fact that Samsung went backc to PRC for ODMs for the same reason PRC manufactures displaced Samsung, because PRC had the most cost competitor manufacturers for low-medium end devices that accounted for most sales.
Sure, thx for playing, but really no point in talking in circles.
I find your last cherrypicked "Central and Eastern" EU smartphone data another stroke of desperation/genius, though it is not totally unexpected. Quite revealing!
All smartphone manufacturers were in China when Xi started shaking down the industry back in 2013 under the banner of "In China, For China." Samsung has diversified away and to Vietnam and India since, but I don't think we want to have a supply-chain all consolidated in one location/country.
I'm otherwise of opinion that the West's decisive counter measures are necessary against China's mercantile practices.
That happened due to the China-South Korea trade war following the installation of THAAD in SK in 2016 [0]. Notice how the Chinese OEM spike and Samsung's decline happen following the 2016-17 diplomatic crisis. It was also during this period that Korea Inc began shifting to Vietnam [1][2] and India as a result.
Additonally, that spike for Xiaomi and other Chinese OEMs also happened right when Chinese OEMs expanded their India business in 2015-17 [3][4][5]. On that note, notice how all those Chinese OEM saw sales dropped and then flatlined from 2021 onwards. While the pandemic did play a role, India began lawfare against Chinese companies following the Galwan Crisis in 2021 [6][7][8] with the Indian government de facto forcing Chinese firms to "indianize" [9] - which ironically is similar to how the Chinese government operated in the 2000s and 2010s with Western firms and what the Chinese government leveraged against Korea a decade previously.
>> That happened due to the China-South Korea trade war following the installation of THAAD in SK in 2016 [0]. <<
Not really. THAAD really plays no part in Samsung's fall in China. Samsung's smartphone sales in China was already down by -70% by the time THAAD broke out in 2016 from its peak in 2013 and still went down further to less than 1%. Samsung packed up and closed the last Chinese factory in 2019 -- went to Vietnam instead.
Patrick McGee recently released Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company: it better describes the anti-foreign political situation in China at the time and what it meant to the smartphone industry. And how Apple avoided Samsung's fate, but is now captured by it. See Chapter 26 "Despot" and on.
They were solid top in quality for 15 years for Android. DeX, pen features, camera software was solid. OneUI became very customizeable. But it was stably boring at best, and atrocious at worst, and they couldn't ship any other standout feature that wasn't scrapped soon after.
Now they shipped the same camera on their most sold flagship phone 3 years in a row, same battery size for 5 years. Flip-flopping between Qualcomm CPUs as their own couldn't compete after years of trying. They don't deserve the spot they have for quite some time now.
As someone who bought mostly Samsung phones before (went from Samsung A3 2015 -> S8 -> Z Fold 4 -> Z Fold 6), their recent few years have been painful to watch. I’ll take the Z Fold series as an example since that’s what I use, but from what I heard their other devices aren’t better off.
The Z Fold 7 is a downgrade over the Fold 6 I have in every way in my opinion (but I can at least thank the Fold 7 for making the Fold 6 new in a sealed box cheaper with 512GB than an iPhone 17 Pro Max with 256GB and thus making an upgrade viable).
And it seems like this has been happening to their other devices as well. I won’t buy another Samsung phone (and foldable at that; Samsung had the only good format, IMO).
Just a few things which would make me never buy a Fold 7:
No Under Display Camera, instead it has a big hole (This cam is used only for meetings anyway, for selfies you use the main camera anyway. A big uninterrupted plane of screen is far far far far better than a better cam for meetings that gets compressed and then is a tiny square in the corner anyway.)
No unlockable bootloader worldwide (is a OneUI 8 issue, not specifically a Fold 7 issue)
They made it thinner instead of giving it a bigger battery, which makes it way harder to open and hold
No S-Pen support (Seriously, why? The Fold is one of the main devices where a pen is cool. It makes more sense to include it in the Fold than the S Ultra.)
They completely destroyed the aspect ratio (The outer screen was thin and tall, perfect for one-handed use, kinda like a TV remote; you can reach everywhere with one hand. The inner screen still is taller than it is wide, while almost being 4:3. This makes older content like shows and emulated games fill almost the entire screen without giving overly huge black bars on 16:9 content. Now on the Fold 7 the outer screen is almost like a normal phone and the inner screen is almost a perfect square. This makes the outer screen way worse to use one-handed and the inner screen has huge bars on everything and apps that are fullscreen scale terribly with just a few way oversized UI options showing.)
It is thinner, too thin. The Fold 6 was perfect in that regard, but when I tried to open the Fold 7 on one of those showcase units in a store it was not possible to get a good grip on the side to open it. Instead they should have just increased the battery size or included the S-Pen in the bottom like with the S Ultras.
Worse hinge that snaps open after 90° instead of being able to stay in almost every angle like the Fold 6.
The only upgrades are:
The camera isn’t that much worse anymore (Literally 0 use for me, I never take images and the ones I do are pretty much only to note something quickly, but I understand that that was a huge downside for most people so that is a good upgrade.)
Better dust protection
Snapdragon X Elite (This is the one thing I wish my Fold had)
And all of these downgrades for 100€ more MSRP. Also those downgrades are just what I remembered off the top of my head.
Most of the compromises were just to make it thinner (the removal of the UDC and S-Pen support and the worse hinge for example), which like I said was in and of itself a downgrade.
To me it feels like they only listened to the reviewers that never used a Fold and after their 2 hours of the hands-on experience will never use one again. It’s not a normal phone; it’s not supposed to be. So trying to make it 1:1 like a normal phone removes everything that made it good because I specifically didn’t want a normal phone. Especially since the biggest issue was the price, so increasing the price further (over the already increased price of the Z Fold 5/6) is so stupid.
But enough of my rambles, I’m probably the only person that uses their Fold this way if I look at all the reviews which call the Fold 7 the best foldable Samsung ever made and a huge improvement over all the other Z Folds.
I hope it was at least somewhat readable since it’s still very early, I’m tired, and English isn’t my native language.
All they have to do is put out a high end phone, vanilla android, unlocked bootloader, hardware switches, and sell it as a developer phone. they would sell a ton.
I don't think they care about the hardware anymore. They want people in the Samsung ecosystem logging in with a Samsung account being served Samsung ads in every Samsung app.
Ship more don't mean sell more. It means the factory workers screwed more together and they want to sell more. That's all. The market decides who's beating who.
I don’t know how Samsung has been getting away with it for so long. They have this stellar reputation as a premium brand when they are more akin to Roku. Their software experience is among the worst in the industry. Their hardware isn’t as good as people perceive it to be either. I bought 5 of their TV’s and there aren’t 2 that display colors the same way with the exact same settings. The quality is abysmal.
I saw a set of reasonably high end 'Colour True' monitors, and they all looked markedly different until they were profiled. Did you compare to a set of other companies TVs before deciding Samsung was garbage?
What does testing some other brand have to do with anything? If I put 5 of the exact same TV’s next to each other and they all look different, they are objectively bad quality. Maybe someone else makes something better or worse, but the ones in front of me are still bad. I literally had all these screens next to each other displaying the same image. It was not possible to adjust them so they all looked the same. The lighting inside the screens wasn’t even consistent. They had different hotspots.
Because I think you will find that all brands suffer with this. It seems wrong to say Samsung is bad, when you have no benchmark suggesting any other brand is better.
Not because Apple made a jump in sales but mostly because Samsung has been on a decade long decline.
Samsung has good hardware, but their software is really mediocre, at best. Many of their devices are laggy and slow down further after some updates.
This is the case even on high-end devices. Our 12-month-old Galaxy Tab is slower than a 7-year-old Pixel. Hard to understand.
Plus, they make really odd tweaks to the UI, such as adding a permanent button overlay that clashes with most hamburger icons in websites and apps. This drives novice users insane.
If you wanna ship a custom Android, at least get it right. Otherwise, just stick to stock. Sony does this really well: https://developerworld.wpp.developer.sony.com/open-source
Samsung makes a lot of cheap and mid-tier devices with little RAM and not so powerful SoCs. Google also uses slow SoCs, but at least they compensate in hardware.
If you just buy a high-end phone, Samsung is generally fine. If you buy anything cheaper than that, or god forbid buy a phone through a carrier that pumps it full of crap, you're gonna have a terrible time when apps get slower and bulkier and shittier and the hardware shows its age.
Odd. I've had the Z Fold 5 and now 7 and the last few years' worth of Samsung firmware has been excellent for me. Perhaps they build 'for' their flagships and let devices that perhaps have lower tier chipsets run slowly?
I have the Z Fold 4 (EU) and it performs well to this day. It even got the Android 16 upgrade.
Z Fold 3 here, going happily on 4-5 years.
Samsung has nice hardware quality, but no sense of UX, and that goes for their software and hardware.
Similarly for TVs - i got a samsung oled few years ago, and while the hardware seems great, I do wish I had gone with LG as their TVs seem more open to install custom firmware. (I do pretty much just use appleTV and fireTV devices plugged in to the Samsung, but still, the main TV ui is pretty abysmal)
Samsung hardware is not what it used to be.
They have been shipping the same camera block for something like three or four models. Compared to what Chinese competitors like Xiaomi or Oppo offer, it doesn't look that great anymore.
The poor software is just the cherry on top.
On top of buggy software they just have user hostile design choices. Like forcing agreements to sell health data if you want a step counter, or shoving ads in your face that you can't disable without hamstringing functionality.
Makes me think about switching if alternative markets really do come to iOS and they get a real firefox
The status bar icons on the top right of One UI (Samsung's firmware skin) aren't even aligned or the same size. It's only just been fixed in One UI 8.5, years from the problem first happening.
You're welcome if you can't unsee it now.
It's nothing major, but it's one example of how inconsistent and disorganised their software is, there's so much low hanging fruit that you'd think their software division was under duress, along with year long delays to software updates.
Well Samsung was overtaken by Xiaomi and Xiaomi software is even worse...?
And on top of that, you can't unlock One UI 8 and above.
As much as I wish it wasn't the case, not being able to bootloader unlock is not a cause of any meaningful reduction in sales. The Android ROM community has been on life support for a few years now.
I recently got a Samsung device for testing, and the experience was terrible. It took three hours to get the device into a usable state.
First, it essentially forces you to create both a Samsung account and a Google account, with numerous shady prompts for "improving services" and "allowing targeted ads."
Then it required nine system updates (apparently, it can only update incrementally), and worst of all, after a while, it automatically started downloading bloatware like "Kawai" and other questionable apps, and you cannot cancel the downloads.
I wonder how much Samsung gets paid to preinstall all that crap. The phone wasn't cheap, either. The company seems penny wise and pound foolish.
These accounts are not required! I use my Samsungs without a Google account. And I only use a Samsung account on some of them.
It's harder to install apps but I use aurora store. Push messaging still works without a Google account.
I don't disagree with Samsung's decline, but:
> Sales of the iPhone 17 series in the U.S. — including the iPhone Air — during the first four weeks after launch was 12% higher than that of the iPhone 16 series, excluding the iPhone 16e, the research firm said. In China, a critical market for Apple, sales of the iPhone 17 series during the same period were 18% higher than its predecessor.
So iPhone 17 is selling well. I think it's fair to call it a hit. Do they make another hit next year? Who knows (I'd bet against it), but they won this year's game I believe.
Wait, why is the 16e excluded?
The 16e was launched out of the usual release cycle, five months after the rest of the 16 family.
If it weren't for the S-Pen, I'd ditch Samsung in a heartbeat.
The day iPhone has a built-in EMR/AES stylus is the day I become a customer (despite being an Android lifer).
Don't think that will ever happen though, despite Apple shipping Pencil for iPads.
Samsung has definitely built a (small) moat being the only vendor with that offering.
The rumors say Apple is shipping their folding phone next year, I'm crossing my fingers that one might have stylus support and then it'll meander its way back to the regular phones.
I'm in the same boat. Although I would also be willing to go back to Apple if they release a truly small phone. But I'm forced to carry one of these gigantic beasts I want to be able to take (handwritten) notes with it.
The 17 series has some upgrade-worthy features at least, unlike 16 where I'm not sure where the improvements were.
The base 17 got always on display, while the 17 Pro got a huge camera upgrade. Both 17s got the much-improved selfie camera.
True, thanks for that info. Changes the narrative entirely.
I don't call them Samdung for no reason
https://www.leisuretown.com/library/qac/25.jpg
That's because Samsung's new offerings are trash compared to where we were a few years ago. I have the S24 Ultra and in my opinion it's better than the S25 ultra. The camera, the features, maybe it's better built for AI but I don't want Samsung's garbage AI on my phone. Even the new S-Pen loses features to the old one (one of the main features I used too, the remote shutter).
The Object Eraser feature recently updated to have an "AI Object Eraser" and now a simple removal of a sign in my picture adds an "AI Generated" watermark onto it. They spam me every time I use the regular Object Eraser to try the AI one, it's really not impressive in any way and now adds a watermark even for the simplest modifications.
Definitely all around seems like Samsung is on a decline. I probably won't be buying a Samsung next time I need a phone, though I won't be buying Apple either.
> Definitely all around seems like Samsung is on a decline. I probably won't be buying a Samsung next time I need a phone, though I won't be buying Apple either.
Same here, used to have a Samsung, moved to Moto G which was the best phone I had so far, currently on a iPhone 12 Mini, and want none of these phones anymore. I just want something that doesn't get in your way, and actually have some well-thought UX, especially when connected to the car. CarPlay is a whole dumpster-fire of failed UX experiments it feels like, is actively dangerous, and iOS in general have so many hidden patterns I'm still discovering today (guessing they also add new gestures all the time) that it feels like I only understand 20% of the phone's features.
Someone recommended me Sony for Android + higher quality hardware, where the company also doesn't seem hellbent on screwing you over inside the phone OS itself. What do people here with Sony phones think about them?
> feels like I only understand 20% of the phone's features
This is a persistent problem with iOS. Features are added but not really mentioned. The online manual is very focused on "how do I..." without giving a clear overview of "here's everything you can do. New gestures are added without giving an obvious way to reverse them if you accidentally trigger one.
I belong to one demography of ex Samsung customers:
I've blacklisted them for hurting UX to show ads. Last device: my very high-end OLED TV has the worst menu navigation, just to take me back to the home screen where they hoped to show ads to me. Once I realized they are analysing my content, even when coming from an external device to send home for ADs, I just disconnected it from the internet.
I'll not buy anything again unless they change this and stay away from it long enough to repair the damage to trust.
Not buying an Apple device either, but for different reasons.
TBF: Apple has slowly been on the “push our services” ads thing. At least not other companies.
But they’re doing it. And it’s annoying.
Put an AppleTV in front of it and use it like a monitor. I’ve been blissfully unaware of the TV vendors’ bad software and invasions of privacy for years
The only apple product I ever bought has been an ipad with the huge disappointment that every app gets paused when not focused. I don't want to pay a company that deliberately limits my ability to use the product. My TV is being used as a second 4k 144hz monitor for my Fedora 43 + KDE on AMD CPU and Nvidia GPU, watch movies on it, play games, etc, and don't have to put up with limitations of Apple ecosystem.
https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/global-smartpho...
So every quarter this year except the last quarter, Samsung outsold Apple. So they're predicting that Q42025 for Samsung will be miserable sales or Apple will have skyrocketed sales?
The iPhone 17 (released in September) is selling extremely well, and Apple sales tend to be concentrated in Q4 due to the new phone (and the holidays, though those should also affect Samsung).
>(and the holidays, though those should also affect Samsung)
Doesn't Samsung release their new flagship phones in January/February?
Yes, but that was the case in past years too, where they kept the lead.
Well, Samsung chose for example to stop supporting micro SD cards. Samsung just keeps chasing Apple, so I don't see any point to buy their phones anymore.
The only unique selling point Samsung has left I can think of are foldable phones.
I don't think anybody except you, me, and other geeks on forums like this, care about SD cards. I wish it were different.
It also doesn't help that google have steadily been increasing their market share.
So dark patterns to increase peer pressure and hard vendor lock in work then: exploiting networking effects and social pressure like green vs. blue bubbles, technically unnecessary hard requirements for other devices that are locked into the same garden prison, random compatibility restrictions/omissions in built in apps etc.
Apple really is far from innocent. They just pull their customers over the table in such a smooth way that it feels like nest warmth to them.
No, it's just that Samsung phones suck.
Or maybe they make better phones?
I got tired of Android after 9 years of being Android only. I just wanted a phone that worked. Apple made said phone. Android feels like your younger cousin's sketchy Windows computer. I remember changing from like 2 different Android phones over a period of 4 years or so, and my amazing megapixel photos looked nowhere near as good as my cousins 5-year-old iPhone photos.
I switched to IPhone 13 pro 3.5 years ago and I have the completely opposite experience. It doesn’t “just work”.
- Swipe typing is so horrible I had to disable it.
- Notifications are extremely large and you have less control over what type of notifications you want to receive.
- You can’t transfer files by simply connecting your phone to a PC.
- Videos played in Safari don’t automatically rotate to landscape mode (nor there is a button to quickly do this) unless you disable portrait lock from control center. If you lock this again hoping it will stay in landscape it will switch back to portrait mode.
- You can’t set alarm on a certain date.
- You can only snooze the alarm for 9 minutes (I think you can configure this in iOS26, but this was unacceptable even 5 years ago)
- Apps get killed or stopped in background extremely frequently which means that if you have some long running task you need to keep the app open.
- Hotspot automatically disconnects even with a Macbook (Windows/Linux is much worse). I used to live without home internet relying on hotspot feature. IPhone hotspot proved to be extremely unreliable.
This is not even mentioning more technical things like sideloading, torrent client etc.
> - You can’t set alarm on a certain date.
I have some alarms for specific dates, do you mean a single use alarm?
> - You can only snooze the alarm for 9 minutes (I think you can configure this in iOS26, but this was unacceptable even 5 years ago)
To this day I miss one alarm that LG phones had where it would make me do more work to even dismiss it, on purpose, because I am known to just turn it off and keep sleeping.
> - Hotspot automatically disconnects even with a Macbook (Windows/Linux is much worse). I used to live without home internet relying on hotspot feature. IPhone hotspot proved to be extremely unreliable.
I have not had this issue, though I did have the issue of not realizing that since I had bought my phone through Apple instead of through T-Mobile my data / hotspot plan was not the right one, I realized this after I left T-Mobile for Mint, but I rarely if ever use hotspot.
> - Swipe typing is so horrible I had to disable it.
I had the 12 Pro and now the 17 Pro, I rarely do swipe typing, voice to text is slightly more annoying, I would hope that in this world of AI that Apple would improve their voice to text, it just doesn't hear me at all half of the time.
> - You can’t transfer files by simply connecting your phone to a PC.
Apple has always been all about being on Apple, so yeah, though I have gotten my Linux to mount files from the iPhone before, doesn't look pretty at all mind you, but I can take a rough but full snapshot of all my images on my phone..
> > - You can’t set alarm on a certain date.
> I have some alarms for specific dates, do you mean a single use alarm?
Are you using a third party app, or the built in Clock/Alarm?
The built in clock alarm lets you set alarms for specific days ("Repeat -> Never / Every {Monday..Sunday}"), but doesn't let you set alarms for specific dates (Set my alarm for 6am on Wednesday 10th and Monday 29th)
> > - Hotspot automatically disconnects even with a Macbook (Windows/Linux is much worse). I used to live without home internet relying on hotspot feature. IPhone hotspot proved to be extremely unreliable.
This happens to me frequently when I switched to using my phone hotspot as my primary internet connection for a week. My solution ended up being getting a dedicated AP, and having that connect to my phone instead. A random Netgear running OpenWRT was able to more reliably stay tethered to my Apple iPhone than my Apple Macbook or Apple iPad. It's ironic when inter-vendor works better than intra-vendor.
> > - You can’t transfer files by simply connecting your phone to a PC.
> Apple has always been all about being on Apple, so yeah, though I have gotten my Linux to mount files from the iPhone before, doesn't look pretty at all mind you, but I can take a rough but full snapshot of all my images on my phone..
That's about all I can do with Windows PC, Linux PC, or Mac too. Transfer photos. If I want to transfer arbitrary files by connecting to USB and browsing a filesystem (e.g. everything that Files.app displays in "On my iPhone" view), I can't on any platform.
My iPhone friends literally grab my s24 ultra camera when we take pictures at cocktail bars and tell me to send them the picture
The only time my wife has been jealous of someone elses photos was when my mother in law got a new iPhone and we were five years into ours, far longer than I ever held on an Android phone for.
Not really? All Samsung phones that we owned were at least as good - with the exception of a phone that we bought from a US carrier. The carrier mods on that one phone were total shit. But these modifications are entirely avoidable by buying an unlocked phone.
Weird take. Android is still ~80% of the market.
That’s true, but that includes many low-cost devices, a market segment in which Apple clearly is not interested.
very weird indeed. Apple has ~20% of the global smartphone sales, but 80% of global industry profit.
pareto?
> 80% of global industry profit.
Are you thinking about the "services", aka mostly mobile casinos ?
I never saw a figure of Apple making 80% of profit on the devices, I'd love to see where you get the number from.
No services. Or profit margin.
Apple is the most profitable company in the smartphone business and, while their "unit sales" or market share accounts for only about 20%, Apple's share of the smartphone industry's profit is about 80+%.
If what you mean by "smartphone business" is neither unit sales nor services, I'd really need you to point at some specific report to understand what we're talking about.
>The Cupertino, California-based tech giant collected 85% of operating profit and 48% of revenue from smartphone sales over the course of the year. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-03/iphone-gr...
>However, it outperformed a struggling smartphone market in terms of shipment, revenue and operating profit growth, in turn achieving its highest-ever shares of 18%, 48% and 85% in these metrics respectively, in 2022.
https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/2022-global-sma...
Almost three year old numbers, but not all that much should have changed since then.
That's like "look at us, whatever we do, you are overpaying"
I have a Samsung Galaxy and their build quality is still pretty solid especially compared to the Chinese brands (I'm grateful Samsung didn't copy their ugly camera bumps) but the battery size is mediocre and the software is somehow worse than all the Chinese iOS clones.
The idea is to buy a normal Chinese android Phone, not a iOS clone. That's where the good and cheap devices are at
Samsung is quite hesitant to hop onto the silicon carbon battery train. I guess they are more conservative after the burning battery debacle a few years ago, but still, I look over at those juicy 7000+ kWh phone batteries and I wants it.
I know why someone would buy an iPhone or a Pixel. I guess people buy Samsung because they're sold in stores?
Round here many people think there are only two manufacturers of phones: Apple and Samsung. You'll struggle to find someone who isn't "in to tech" who has heard of Pixel. I've never had a Samsung but use Android and numerous people have referred to my phone as "a Samsung". So it's a stronger brand than you might think.
Source: https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/Global-Smartpho...
Looks like Samsung decreased a lot because Xiaomi ate their lunch, which doesn't surprise me.
I'm surprised that Samsung managed to stay #1 globally for so long after forced out of China, after Xi's rise to power in 2013.
Well huawei ban bought samsung sometime, scared PRC brands from expanding into north american market. TBH Samsung was still pretty dominant until PRC brands really turned dial on hardware while Samsung stagnated until they couldn't. The latest round of hardware is pretty good, as in PRC flagship parity worthy. TBH the Koreans are very talented, they don't have the numbers to keep up with PRC speed / product cycles, but if they can iterate proper flagship every other year, they'd be in a good place. Also not putting ads on fridges.
Sure, I'm actually old enough to remember Huawei's Ascend sold under MetroPCS in the US back in the early 2010's. Leica collaboration with Huawei in 2016 worked wonders and other Chinese smartphone makers definitely stepped up, but, by this time, Samsung's China sales fell off the cliff by ~70+% to a low single-digit market share from its 20% peak in 2013 under Xi's "In China, For China" campaign.
Not sure if Huawei was ever a threat to Samsung or Apple outside China as most of Huawei's growth was in China only and there was no other single major market in which Huawei came close to Apple's or Samsung's. China is also the only major market where Samsung's market share is less than 1% and I'm very disinclined to believe this is coincidence. I think the common misconception is that Samsung was "outcompeted" by Huawei when it was in fact forced out of China. This practice became quite common in other industries too after Xi -- eg, all foreign competitors in EV batteries business such as LG, Panasonic, Samsung, etc were also effectively banned in China under Xi's Made-In-China 2025, launched in 2015 to protect local "champions," such as CATL/BYD.
Samsung share was dropping in PRC before Xi, i.e. when cheap domestic brands started eating the bottom. Samsung flagship was still popular, i.e. the low single digit highend, then the Note battery recall drama happend and basically THAAD right after and the double whammy basically killed Samsung in PRC. Now do I think Samsung could have recovered and held on like Apple with domestic competition, probably not, samsung not as sticky as life style choice.
Before Huawei sanction global shipments went from 100m to 200m in like 4 years (double digit YoY growth) while samsung was declining from 300m in same time period. Everyone saw which way the trend lines was going, especially in HW flagships.
MIC2025 is like for establishing nascent industries, i.e. your batteries example. PRC companies get whitelist/subsidies for a few years then opens to foreign players after CATL becomes incumbant. Samsung mobile doesn't fit MIC2025 pattern since PRC already established phone manufacturing before MIC2025 started, entire low&high spectrum by 2015. It's not some strategic industry being spun up from 0, they already knew everything about phone production from Foxconn. There's no reason to force Samsung out of PRC, domestic phones already got CATLized and was outcompeting Samsung by then. Also it's not like Samsung was formally "kicked out", they left after seeing same writing on the wall. If Samsung got kicked out, like even informally, there'd be transition plan, i.e. get a local player to take over Huizhou company seen in other MIC2025 plays. Factories don't sit idle. Instead Samsung picked up and left and basically Huizhou become ghost towned.
>> Samsung share was dropping in PRC before Xi, ... the Note battery recall drama happend and basically THAAD right after ... <<
Sure, except that narrative has too many flaws. Samsung China's smartphone sales increased from 11M in 2011, to 30M in 2012, to about 60+M in 2013 -- no such "drop" before Xi's rise. Then it cratered as Xi's anti-foreign "In China, For China" policy went in full swing. By 2016, Samsung's China sales figure was already down to just over 10M -- the Note 7 and THAAD were likewise inconsequential and Samsung smartphone sales continued to slide in China and China only. During this time between 2016-2017, Samsung's global sales continued to maintain its lead at around 310M even as its Chinese competitors, such as Huawei struggle against Samsung outside China without protection from Xi. Again, this conspicuous drop was in China only and there was no sudden change in consumer preference or product offering, as evident from Samsung's global sales -- ie, while Samsung China sales was down, it was up elsewhere. Xi's mercantile policies and the rising nationalism in China were the only changing variables.
Also it wasn't just Samsung alone either -- Apple was the next major foreign smartphone seller in China. Apple avoided Samsung's fate after Xi's rise in 2013 and Patrick McGee, a FT reporter, has recently released Apple in China: the Capture of the World's Greatest Company, meticulously detailing how Apple countered Xi's "For China, In China," but, by doubling down on China, Apple is in effect "captured" by Xi. see Chapter 26 "Despot" and on.
Looking at sales in 2010s mobile growth market is flawed. look at market share. 2010-2015 was mass smart phone proliferation, the demand denominator was expanding so companies can sell more phones while lose relative marketshare. Samsung PRC share peaked and started dropping right before/around when Xi entered office, i.e. domestic (budget) champions was grown before Xi, they were outcompeted before MIC2025 or battery/thaad drama. Samsung global sales stalled at ~300m and started dipping below (i.e. losing total sales and market share in growth market), again need to look at market share because denominator of global phone sales was exploding. Samsung Could had 40/50% of global sales 500m+ branded sales, instead Huawei+others jumped in and ate big chunk of Android pie, i.e. actual global Android shipments was like 1B, PRC brands including white labeled OEMs captured probably 50%+ of that. Huawei going from 0-200m phone sales abroad while Samsung stalling and even declining at ~300m when they had 500m+ to capture isn't Huawei struggling (aging double digit global YoY growth at the time), it's PRC brands gobbling up new demand at expense of Samsung. Samsung got short term boost after HW ban, then started stagnating again when budget PRC brands went flagship. Also there was huge change in product offering 2010-2015s in PRC, that's when domestic budget brands and then flagships proliferated. There's nothing sudden about any of this, Xi barely had any time in office to engineer some mass buy domestic movement, that only happened late 2010s across variety of domestic sectors.
Patrick McGee / Apple in China is motivated writing. Trying to sell narrative Apple taught PRC everything they instead of you know 100,000s PRC tooling engineers and manufacturing specialistists trying to troubleshoot and scale Apple design. I don't know what Chapter 26 has to do with anything, IIRC it's mostly PRC making Apple kneel to PRC soveign internet, aka follow doemstic laws and Apple complied because they need PRC manufacturing. And doing so let Apple kept their share in PRC for another 20 years which wasn't bad return. And it's not even like Samsung left PRC, they had to pivot back to PRC ODMs (wingtech, huaqin) for ~100 of millions of low end devices (I htink the As and Ms) shortly after.
>> look at market share. Samsung PRC share peaked and started dropping right before/around when Xi entered office ... <<
Sure, you could use either metrics, but it shows the same thing: Samsung China's market share in 2012 was 17.7% (30M). Xi came to power in mid 2013 and Samsung's sales in each quarter 2013 were 18% (12.5M) in Q1, 19% (15M) Q2, 18% (17M) Q3, and 19% Q4 -- ie, it's a steady YoY growth, in relative % or absolute terms.
In other words, Samsung's sales were not affected by local competition "right before" or "around" Xi. Only after Xi's "In China, For China," both market share and absolute sales plunged from 17.7% (2012), to 19% (2013) to 7.9% (2014) or 31M (2012), to 70M (2013) to 35M (2014).
Again, this was isolated to China and as a result of Xi's anti-foreign policy in China only -- Samsung's sales continue to grow outside China to maintain their global lead.
Further, I cited McGee's recent excellent work which clearly demonstrates how Xi's anti-foreign policies suddenly changed business climate in China against foreign competitors -- which starts at Part 5: Political Awakening, Chapter 26 -- why it has everything to do with "The DESPOT." Not market competition, or THAAD/Note 7 fire.
Your theory doesn't work in real world timeline where we have to factor in actual execution time. Also it simply doesn't match actual policy history. Xi doesn't get to flip switch and conjure a bunch of domestic phone brands and shift market share within a few quarters. That stuff takes years, not suddenly. Hence on/around. The fact that Samsung peaked right when Xi entered office means Xi was not causative since Xi wouldn't have any time to implement buy domestic policy, which also didn't exist at the time. Market share changes work on multi year lag, for Samsung shares to decline, it requires Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo etc to have build out manufacturing years prior, i.e. before Xi.
Samsung global sales stagnated few years later and saw some decline in the same period as Huawei was doing double digit global YoY growth - again factor in actual market lag of PRC companies cornering domestic market before going abroad. Then HW got knee capped by export controls. Now maybe HW might not have surpassed Samsung but it's pretty clear Samsung wasn't growing while PRC brands were, while none sanctioned brands continue to chip away at Samsung (i.e. this article).
Either way, claiming there was some anti foreign policy in 2013 simply doesn't comport with reality because we have paperwork of Xi's actual year 1 policies, there wasn't any anti-foreign or buy domestic initiatives. Hence I don't see the relevance of McGee regardless. I think chapter talks about political awakening to PRC business climate not any mobile sector industrial substitution policies (which again, did not exist).
PRC telling Apple to follow PRC laws, i.e. cloud sovereignty isn't anti foreign it's just forcing foreign companies to compete on same requirements as domestic companies like data localization. That happeneing in 2013 was part of broader cybersecurity/ideological work, i.e. the institution work stuff that applied to domestic and foreign companies. Actual MIC2025 related industrial policy didn't happen until years later. Procedurally Xi's first year focused on corruption/CCDI, institutional stuff, there wasn't any industrial policy like MIC until a year later, like 3rd plenum was in December 2013. Xi wasn't going around telling domestic consumers to stop buying Samsung phones or kicking Samsung out of the country. Otherwise Samsung again, wouldn't have freely returned to PRC to partner with PRC ODMs for low end lines that they realize even PRC has cost advantage on vs Vietnam. Incidientally the same cost advantage that made PRC / global consumers buy from affordable PRC brands in the first place.
>> Your theory doesn't work in real world timeline where we have to factor in actual execution time. ... That stuff takes years,
(no "reply" button in your last comment)
Sure, doesn't really matter. I just have to demonstrate that your "local competition" theory in pre-Xi era doesn't hold water and the real world data don't bear that out, which I already have.
Whether Samsung China's sudden sales collapse came 1 day, or 1 year after Xi? not very relevant. That being said, in Apple's case, the Chinese media's coordinated attack started on Consumer Day in March 2013, just a day after Xi became president, but because of Apple's quick response and bold risky bet, suffered no damage. Samsung China's first sales decline since 2009 on the other hand became evident in Q1 2014 and after, or some 3 quarters after Xi. Or roughly equal to a 50% drop in market share and unit sales for the entire year 2014 and more significant drops in subsequent years. So we are talking 4+ years to go from 20% to less than 1%, so there goes your timeline arg out the window, too -- it's plenty time to implement informal anti-market policies and destroy a foreign competitor completely.
Again, this dramatic drop was not seen elsewhere, but in only China, indicating that the problem wasn't inherent to Samsung's product offering, competitiveness, or market. In open markets, such as EU, Samsung maintained a steady ~32+% market share post-Xi and wasn't affected at all by the rise or fall of Huawei, before or after the ban. Samsung EU's market share dipped below 30% in 2021 for the first time in 8+ years, after Huawei's ban which further undermines the narrative that Samsung somehow benefited from it.
E: last comment
Real world data bares out that local competition theory holds. You've demonstrated questionable ability to intrepret data in real world context. Of course it's relevant when Samsung sales collapse happens if it happens in time period where policy changes (which again does not exist) simply could not have effect. The fact that collapse happened when Xi cannot have causative effect means Xi's policies (or lack of) was not responsible. If Xi entered office, made policy to kill Samsung, and 4-5 years later PRC built up domestic mobile players to do so, then sure. But those players already existed and had scaling plans to supplant Samsung domestically pre Xi. Samsung markshare dropping in subsequent years was because domestic PRC brands who built factories pre Xi started doing their natural scaling hence execution years prior to Xi resulted in capturing more marketshare in subsequent years, which entirely comports with timeline. Your theory also simply doesn't comport on the fundmental level that there weren't any anti-market policies in smart phone domain, because it was mature domain where pre Xi PRC competitors were already in place. Anti-market policies was for nacent industries, i.e. MIC2025.
Dramatic drop was seen first in PRC then globally which fits customary trend of PRC players establishing in PRC first then expand globally. We have global data that Samsung sales went from stalling to negative while Huawei scaling as global player to rising after Huawei ban, i.e. Samsung share went from stalling to jumping to 40% in EU after Huawei ban from 30%. Like this is all very well established history, there's no need to entertain alternative / revisionist theories when plenty of market analysis at the time already discussed Huawei eating lunch of Samsung and Apple pre ban while Samsung being primarily benefitiary of HW ban. And again it entire avoids the fact that Samsung went backc to PRC for ODMs for the same reason PRC manufactures displaced Samsung, because PRC had the most cost competitor manufacturers for low-medium end devices that accounted for most sales.
https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/samsung-gains-h...
Sure, thx for playing, but really no point in talking in circles.
I find your last cherrypicked "Central and Eastern" EU smartphone data another stroke of desperation/genius, though it is not totally unexpected. Quite revealing!
That goes both ways though, there's a slight but growing taboo about Chinese brands for many in the West.
Edit: not forgetting tariffs and sanctions, of course.
All smartphone manufacturers were in China when Xi started shaking down the industry back in 2013 under the banner of "In China, For China." Samsung has diversified away and to Vietnam and India since, but I don't think we want to have a supply-chain all consolidated in one location/country.
I'm otherwise of opinion that the West's decisive counter measures are necessary against China's mercantile practices.
Aren't they really big in other parts of the world, like Europe and Latin America?
That's how Samsung maintained the global top seller status after the Korean companies was forced out of China.
That happened due to the China-South Korea trade war following the installation of THAAD in SK in 2016 [0]. Notice how the Chinese OEM spike and Samsung's decline happen following the 2016-17 diplomatic crisis. It was also during this period that Korea Inc began shifting to Vietnam [1][2] and India as a result.
Additonally, that spike for Xiaomi and other Chinese OEMs also happened right when Chinese OEMs expanded their India business in 2015-17 [3][4][5]. On that note, notice how all those Chinese OEM saw sales dropped and then flatlined from 2021 onwards. While the pandemic did play a role, India began lawfare against Chinese companies following the Galwan Crisis in 2021 [6][7][8] with the Indian government de facto forcing Chinese firms to "indianize" [9] - which ironically is similar to how the Chinese government operated in the 2000s and 2010s with Western firms and what the Chinese government leveraged against Korea a decade previously.
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-12/china-sai...
[1] - https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20181122001200320
[2] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-02/s-korea-d...
[3] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/baxiabhishek/2017/09/12/the-ris...
[4] - https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-techn...
[5] - https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/oppo-grew-...
[6] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-seizes-725-mln-xia...
[7] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-accuses-chinas-opp...
[8] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-enforcement-direc...
[9] - https://etplay.com/business/why-chinese-cos-have-been-indian...
>> That happened due to the China-South Korea trade war following the installation of THAAD in SK in 2016 [0]. <<
Not really. THAAD really plays no part in Samsung's fall in China. Samsung's smartphone sales in China was already down by -70% by the time THAAD broke out in 2016 from its peak in 2013 and still went down further to less than 1%. Samsung packed up and closed the last Chinese factory in 2019 -- went to Vietnam instead.
Patrick McGee recently released Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company: it better describes the anti-foreign political situation in China at the time and what it meant to the smartphone industry. And how Apple avoided Samsung's fate, but is now captured by it. See Chapter 26 "Despot" and on.
Apple has done a great job capturing the gifting market, which shows up in their Q4 numbers.
Apple makes you feel something for many people. Many on here dont get it.
They were solid top in quality for 15 years for Android. DeX, pen features, camera software was solid. OneUI became very customizeable. But it was stably boring at best, and atrocious at worst, and they couldn't ship any other standout feature that wasn't scrapped soon after.
Now they shipped the same camera on their most sold flagship phone 3 years in a row, same battery size for 5 years. Flip-flopping between Qualcomm CPUs as their own couldn't compete after years of trying. They don't deserve the spot they have for quite some time now.
Why are Samsung so big on the folding phone nonsense?
I went in a shop to see this nonsense with my own eyes,and I almost bought one.
As someone who bought mostly Samsung phones before (went from Samsung A3 2015 -> S8 -> Z Fold 4 -> Z Fold 6), their recent few years have been painful to watch. I’ll take the Z Fold series as an example since that’s what I use, but from what I heard their other devices aren’t better off. The Z Fold 7 is a downgrade over the Fold 6 I have in every way in my opinion (but I can at least thank the Fold 7 for making the Fold 6 new in a sealed box cheaper with 512GB than an iPhone 17 Pro Max with 256GB and thus making an upgrade viable). And it seems like this has been happening to their other devices as well. I won’t buy another Samsung phone (and foldable at that; Samsung had the only good format, IMO).
Just a few things which would make me never buy a Fold 7: No Under Display Camera, instead it has a big hole (This cam is used only for meetings anyway, for selfies you use the main camera anyway. A big uninterrupted plane of screen is far far far far better than a better cam for meetings that gets compressed and then is a tiny square in the corner anyway.) No unlockable bootloader worldwide (is a OneUI 8 issue, not specifically a Fold 7 issue) They made it thinner instead of giving it a bigger battery, which makes it way harder to open and hold No S-Pen support (Seriously, why? The Fold is one of the main devices where a pen is cool. It makes more sense to include it in the Fold than the S Ultra.) They completely destroyed the aspect ratio (The outer screen was thin and tall, perfect for one-handed use, kinda like a TV remote; you can reach everywhere with one hand. The inner screen still is taller than it is wide, while almost being 4:3. This makes older content like shows and emulated games fill almost the entire screen without giving overly huge black bars on 16:9 content. Now on the Fold 7 the outer screen is almost like a normal phone and the inner screen is almost a perfect square. This makes the outer screen way worse to use one-handed and the inner screen has huge bars on everything and apps that are fullscreen scale terribly with just a few way oversized UI options showing.) It is thinner, too thin. The Fold 6 was perfect in that regard, but when I tried to open the Fold 7 on one of those showcase units in a store it was not possible to get a good grip on the side to open it. Instead they should have just increased the battery size or included the S-Pen in the bottom like with the S Ultras. Worse hinge that snaps open after 90° instead of being able to stay in almost every angle like the Fold 6.
The only upgrades are: The camera isn’t that much worse anymore (Literally 0 use for me, I never take images and the ones I do are pretty much only to note something quickly, but I understand that that was a huge downside for most people so that is a good upgrade.) Better dust protection Snapdragon X Elite (This is the one thing I wish my Fold had)
And all of these downgrades for 100€ more MSRP. Also those downgrades are just what I remembered off the top of my head. Most of the compromises were just to make it thinner (the removal of the UDC and S-Pen support and the worse hinge for example), which like I said was in and of itself a downgrade.
To me it feels like they only listened to the reviewers that never used a Fold and after their 2 hours of the hands-on experience will never use one again. It’s not a normal phone; it’s not supposed to be. So trying to make it 1:1 like a normal phone removes everything that made it good because I specifically didn’t want a normal phone. Especially since the biggest issue was the price, so increasing the price further (over the already increased price of the Z Fold 5/6) is so stupid.
But enough of my rambles, I’m probably the only person that uses their Fold this way if I look at all the reviews which call the Fold 7 the best foldable Samsung ever made and a huge improvement over all the other Z Folds.
I hope it was at least somewhat readable since it’s still very early, I’m tired, and English isn’t my native language.
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This comment really reminds me of that old Onion column The Outside Scoop by Jackie Harvey.
Really?
All they have to do is put out a high end phone, vanilla android, unlocked bootloader, hardware switches, and sell it as a developer phone. they would sell a ton.
I don't think they care about the hardware anymore. They want people in the Samsung ecosystem logging in with a Samsung account being served Samsung ads in every Samsung app.
This is the truth. They would prefer you use Tizen instead of Android, they just can't convince app makers to build to it yet.
Ship more don't mean sell more. It means the factory workers screwed more together and they want to sell more. That's all. The market decides who's beating who.
This is the best supply chain in the world. They ship _because_ they're selling.
They offload unsold inventory to the big mobile network carriers. Has nothing to do with supply chain.
I don’t know how Samsung has been getting away with it for so long. They have this stellar reputation as a premium brand when they are more akin to Roku. Their software experience is among the worst in the industry. Their hardware isn’t as good as people perceive it to be either. I bought 5 of their TV’s and there aren’t 2 that display colors the same way with the exact same settings. The quality is abysmal.
I saw a set of reasonably high end 'Colour True' monitors, and they all looked markedly different until they were profiled. Did you compare to a set of other companies TVs before deciding Samsung was garbage?
What does testing some other brand have to do with anything? If I put 5 of the exact same TV’s next to each other and they all look different, they are objectively bad quality. Maybe someone else makes something better or worse, but the ones in front of me are still bad. I literally had all these screens next to each other displaying the same image. It was not possible to adjust them so they all looked the same. The lighting inside the screens wasn’t even consistent. They had different hotspots.
Because I think you will find that all brands suffer with this. It seems wrong to say Samsung is bad, when you have no benchmark suggesting any other brand is better.
If other brands suffer from this, they would also be bad quality.
Or is it just a limitation of the technology?