It is no secret that Samsung is a major player in just about every market segment they decide to compete in – Smart TVs, Appliances, Memory chips, CPUs, Displays, Smartphones, and Tablets. That is great if you are a stockholder of Samsung, but not always great in an innovative field such as smartphones and tablets. Competition is good for the consumer and the crops of innovation and improvement are only feed by the need to have many “farmers” in the field…when one manufacturer dominates it can squeeze the very breath out of the competition. According to the latest poll done by Localytics, “It’s Samsung’s World, We Just Live In It.” I love my Samsung Galaxy Note 3, but that is a pretty scary statement, and one that I am not comfortable with.
Localytics is a leader in the analytics and marketing of mobile devices utilizing more than 25 million unique Android devices from October to November 2013, and their latest survey has Samsung holding a 63-percent market share of all Android mobile devices, which would include smartphones, tablets, and the category they created, phablets (although, they prefer fonblets). HTC, LG, Sony and Motorola all follow and pale in comparison with 5-6.5-percent each. While we talk about fragmentation in the different Android operating systems, the one thing that Samsung is helping solidify, providing they update their devices, is to enable more Android devices to be up-to-date with the newer Android Jelly Bean, for instance.
It is easy to see why Samsung has such a large market share when you realize that eight of the top ten Android devices are made by Samsung. It starts with the Galaxy S3 (15.1%), Galaxy S4 (7.4%), Galaxy S2 (5.2%), Galaxy Note 2 (4.8%), Galaxy S3 Mini (1.5%), Galaxy Note (1.4%), Galaxy Ace (1.3%) and Galaxy Y (1.1%) – with only the HTC One (1.3%) and Droid Razr (1.1%) cracking the top ten! Samsung’s Galaxy S series clearly dominates the market with their Galaxy Note 2 phablet is at a respectable 4.8-percent.
Even in the tablet field, Samsung has five out of the ten spots, with their Galaxy Tab series taking first and second place with a total of 38.5-percent of the market. The Nexus 7 grabs 15.2-percent, the Kindle Fire HD 7 at 9.8-percent, Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 in fifth place with 8.6-percent, Kindle Fire with 8.1-percent, Galaxy Tab 10.1 with 3.4-percent, B&N Nook HD+ with 2.6-percent, another Galaxy Tab at 2.4-percent, and in tenth place the B&N Nook HD at 2.2-percent. Samsung represents 53-percent of the Android tablet market, and is even gaining on Apple’s infamous iPad series.
Impressive? Yes. Scary? Yes. Samsung is a great company with a tremendous marketing budget, but, as Spiderman’s uncle said to him – with great power comes great responsibility – let us hope that Samsung holds some kind of responsibility to the Android platform that helped make them the company that dominates today. Let us know in the comments or on Google+ how you feel about Samsung’s domination – good or bad.