The Android ecosystem isn’t alive and well

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MG Sielger nailed it. Samsung’s ecosystem is doing great, but nobody else is making any money.



  • Herding_sheep

    It’s a shame, because i think HTC makes better products than Samsung. At the very least they are comparable, and more distinct than the Samsung iClones.

    You know how all the anti-Apple trolls claim Apple is only successful because of marketing? We all know how ridiculous that is, but it seems to apply fairly well to Samsung. Their products are not differentiated enough from the entire Android ecosystem to simply dominate the field, and yet they do. But they spend a fortune on marketing, and they bash the iPhone in their ads (which is a cheap and easy way to get attention).. Look at Samsung Mobiles total marketing budget. It’s at probably 10x higher than Apples entire marketing spending. All their web/TV/guerrilla marketing….they spend a ton on it.

    And it’s paid off for them. Not at the expense of Apple (their target), but at the expense of their fellow “allies” in the “Open Handset Alliance.”

    • DanPierce

      Marketing only gets your foot in the door. You still need a good product to back it up.

      Still, is it just a coincidence that Samsung, which supplies parts for Apple, is the top Android manufacturer?

  • Tvaddic

    Android was made so that Google could have a presence in mobile,and thus Google can make money selling ads. Google is making money, therefore Android is winning,just not all the partners.

    • http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

      And yet Google is still making more money from iOS users. That makes for a strange definition of “winning.”

      • Tvaddic

        This is a black and white issue, Does Google have a mobile pressence because of Android? Yes. Does Google make money because of Android? Yes. You wouldn’t just stop one division of a company, when another is making more money, when they both can run with out affecting each other. Google is making money more than 80% of the time a customer is buys a smartphone. So they are winning.

        • http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

          Only if Android’s revenue exceeds the costs of developing, marketing, and licensing it.

    • tylernol

      Google had a presence in mobile before — it was available on all other platforms. Google got behind Android because it got greedy and wanted to leverage its monopoly in search into a monopoly in the mobile OS market. However, what has happened is that all partners are struggling, with the exception of Samsung, and Google has lost control of its platform as it has fragmented and Google’s advertising hooks have been removed. Take a look at the Kindle Fire and Baidu. Google gets no benefit in ad revenue from those platforms. Do you think Samsung will continue to let Google have a free presence on its phones? The bottom line is that Google makes far more off selling iOS users to its advertisers than all of the “Android” users out there. If Google was truly honest with itself, it should spin off Android and dedicate itself to getting on all the platforms it can.

      • Tvaddic

        If they do that, then they will be dependent on signing deal with every phone platform. Which is why the don’t fully support Windows Phone because they don’t make any money. And Samsung wouldn’t completely give up free software where they are making record profits to alienate Google. This is similar to the PC industry, just because Dell and HP sold a lot of computers doesn’t mean they would give up on Microsoft, and especially of they were giving Windows for free.

  • http://www.johncblandii.com John C. Bland II

    The ecosystem is fine. Apps are soaring and phones are selling. Individual ODMs are fluttering though.