Google needn't give an X about Samsung

August 8th, 2013, 23:34 Posted By: wraggster

So the search giant is 'spooked' by the giant Korean OEM. It shouldn't be.
Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal quoted insiders from Google who said the top brass wanted to curb Samsung's growing dominance in Android.
The merest glimpse at the stats show why Google might be spooked.
According to IDC, Samsung commands around 40 per cent of the Android ecosystem, and 95 per cent of the profits.
None of the other OEMs is even close. And the halo around the Galaxy brand is now such that even when a clearly excellent and lovely-looking device like the HTC One comes along, well frankly no one gives a shit.
So anyway, this has Google worried. One the one hand, Samsung is far too powerful. On the other, it's the single greatest evangelist for the Android cause.
What's a young girl to do?
Well, it will do something that virtually no consumers are doing: turn to Motorola.
Google bought Moto in 2011 in a bewilderingly huge deal considering the stink of death that hung around the once-great device maker.
Yes, it paid £12.5bn for the company that had recently launched the KRZR. Certainly the worst phone I ever had (for about a fortnight). And that name. They should have called it the Voldemort, so that timid children never had to say it out loud.
But Google had big plans for the Fredo Corleone of Android. Apparently, Android head Andy Rubin described the buyout of Motorola as a “hedge” against an OEM monopoly.
How's that hedge coming along?
The Dext? The Droid? The reinvented Razr? All so very ho-hum. When's the last time you saw anyone using a Motorola phone?
But now we have the Moto X – apparently the first 'proper' Google-made phone.
As far as I can see, this is an unexceptional device, spec wise (the Moto X has no European launch schedule yet, so I haven't handled one).
But it has two USPs:
1. Hands-free voice control
2. Made in the USA
As you may know, the X has voice built right in – like its cousin Google Glass. There's no touch required, you just say 'OK Google' and start making that obscene phone call or nuisance tweet.
All very sensible. What's the point of voice control, if you have to touch the screen?
Of course, the flipside of this is that the X also listens to you all the time (and possibly feeds the info back to Google so it can display only the most relevant ads).
Yeah, it's a grass. And no one likes those.
But worse that that: NOBODY USES VOICE CONTROL.
Unless it's kids trying to get Siri to say '****'.
The Made in the USA thing is more interesting. As great artists like Kim Wilde (Kids in America) and Miley Cyrus (Party in the USA) have proved, you can get a lot of leverage in the US if you suck up to it.
Google has been running ads proclaiming X to be the 'first smartphone designed, engineered and built in the US'.
(Not manufactured, you'll notice).
This looks like very effective marketing to me. Americans are patriotic people. I look forward to the Moto Yee-Har and the Moto **** Yeah!
Good luck to Moto and Google. We all like a bit of competition, I suppose.
But ultimately, i think the search giant is wrong to be scared. Imagine if Samsung were to go a la carte. It's hardly going to revive Bada is it? And a 'proprietary' version of Android would mean no Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube or Google Play Store.
As magnetic as Galaxy is, take those babies off the home screen and watch the market share plummet.
I'm sure that Samsung's own experience with the Samsung App Store (which a developer told me last week sells virtually nothing) would give it a little window into a world without Google apps. What a scary place.
No, Samsung is better off keeping Google close. The other way lies Omnia.

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/read/...samsung/022088

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