“In the smartphone business, following the money leads right to Samsung Electronics Co.,” Spencer E. Ante and Will Connors report for The Wall Street Journal.
“In 2012, Samsung spent $401 million advertising its phones in the U.S. to Apple’s $333 million, according to ad research and consulting firm Kantar Media,” Ante and Connors report. “To be sure, Apple remains a powerful brand that benefits from its own advertising and ubiquitous references in popular culture.”
“Apple’s iPhone is America’s most effective mobile phone brand, advertising analytics firm Ace Metrix said in January,” Ante and Connors report. “But Samsung finished second in phones and was the top technology brand of 2012, said Ace.”
MacDailyNews Take: The convicted patent infringer Samsung needs to spend even more; it isn’t working:
• comScore: Google’s Android, Samsung continue to lose U.S. share to Apple’s iOS, iPhone – March 6, 2013
• World’s best-selling smartphone: Apple iPhone 5; iPhone 4S #2, third place Samsung Galaxy 3 brings up rear – February 20, 2013
Ante and Connors report, “The heavy ad spending is only the most visible of Samsung’s investments. Some wireless carrier executives said the South Korean company also spends more on ‘below the line’ marketing than any device maker. Those funds help pay for in-store advertising, promotions and training for carrier sales representatives that help close the sale.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Below the line” marketing: Spiffs, or kickbacks, paid to carrier salespeople to get them to push inferior, insecure, plastic crap to the great unwashed.
Oh, yeah, and hiring judges.
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Android owners aren’t real smartphone owners – March 12, 2013
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Apple rules the skies with 84% in-flight share vs. Android’s 16% – March 7, 2013
Apple iPad continues domination with over 80% usage share in U.S. and Canada – March 7, 2013
comScore: Google’s Android, Samsung continue to lose U.S. share to Apple’s iOS, iPhone – March 6, 2013
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Android’s Web share down 13% since November; Apple’s iOS now over 60% – February 1, 2013
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Korea JoongAng Daily: Samsung must stop slavishly copying Apple – September 3, 2012
South Korea reassesses its great imitator, Samsung – September 2, 2012
Convicted patent infringer Samsung acuses Apple of trying to limit consumer choice – September 1, 2012
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Samsung mimics Apple product videos in Galaxy S III promo (with video) – August 24, 2012
Now slavish copycat Samsung attempts to knockoff Apple’s retail stores (with video) – August 23, 2012
Samsung: Shameless slavish copiers – August 13, 2012
Apple attorney: Instead of innovating, Samsung chose to copy iPhone and iPad – July 31, 2012
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Now Samsung slavishly copies Apple’s Mac mini – June 1, 2012
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Slavish copier Samsung shamelessly steals Apple’s iPhone 3G design – again – January 3, 2012
Slavish copier Samsung uses girl actress from iPhone 4S ad for Galaxy Tab 8.9 spot (with video) – January 2, 2012
Now Samsung’s slavishly copying Apple’s iPad television ads (with videos) – December 30, 2011
Judge: Can you tell me which is iPad and which is yours? Samsung lawyer: ‘Not at this distance your honor’ – October 14, 2011
Why are Apple’s icons on the wall of Samsung’s store? – September 24, 2011
Apple to Samsung: ‘Blatant copying is wrong’ – April 18, 2011
Apple sues Samsung for attempting to copy look and feel of iPhone, iPad – April 18, 2011
Samsung’s ‘Instinct’ is obviously to make Apple iPhone knockoffs – April 1, 2008
Well, Samung sure don’t spend any money on R&D so it’s got to go somewhere…
apple needs to step up their advertising game
Yup.
Apple might as well buy up an LG or Sharp…
build the whole thing already…
Now that Samsung is in a leadership position… they will find out in time what its like to have others after them… and *ahem* them stealing Samsung IP…. If there is one Android maker they should look out for – it’s Sony… Outside of iPhones, classy look and feel… but its still an Android…
it takes alot more ads to move crap.
Samsung spending lots of money on advertising doesn’t seem like a bad thing, at all. Of course, the actual product has to live up to the hype. I look at it this way. South Korean chaebols don’t pussyfoot around with rivals. They don’t do flesh wounds, they go for the kill. Samsung wants to beat Apple badly enough so the iPhone doesn’t get up again. Apple should have done the same with Android, but instead let Android and Google walk all over them. Now it’s Samsung taking its turn with plastic hobnail boots. This is one reason why Apple gets no respect as a company. Apple never goes for the death blow. It gets an early lead and then slacks off. Microsoft would never have given rivals a chance to survive if it weren’t for the Feds.
Anything bad that happens to Apple now is what they deserved. When you have executives sitting around with over a hundred billion dollars to use and they say they don’t know what to do with it, that in itself seems like they’ve already given up. Frankly, it disgusts me. Apple has a sledgehammer and is too lazy to lift it to flatten the competition and now shareholders are totally screwed.
Apple is just letting Netflix sit out there with some fat share price when Apple has more than enough credit card holders to make Netflix look like it only has a few friends over to watch streaming movies. Samsung is a johnny-come-lately to the smartphone game and within a short time it’s at the top and Apple is RUMORED to be on the defense. It’s totally absurd and there was no reason for it to play out this way. That’s why Apple is seen as having no future. You just can’t let rivals make a fool out of you. I don’t know what’s going on at Apple as to whether they’re concerned or not. However, to the world at large, it appears as though Samsung has Apple in the palm of its hand.
Is the SGS4 introduction causing Apple’s share price to drop? I don’t know for sure, but it certainly isn’t making it go up. I hope Apple knows what its doing, but it’s getting very hard to tell by the way things are going in terms of perception.
Oh yeah, right…..
MS spent so much time and money being anti-competitive and squashing rivals they forgot to do R&D and QC to make a product worth using.
Apple needs to focus on their products, NOT wallstreet and vanquishing imaginary, clueless, competitors. Who cares if SameDung has 90% of the market share if Apple is still cranking awesome products and capturing 90% of the industry profits?
You must be a paid troll as I simply do not understand why someone would spend so much time posting here.
Imagine how much money Samsung would make if they didn’t have to spend it on advertising and legal fees?
Yea – without the spending to hold off Apple’s lawyers and the money spent on shiny ads that appeal to Android settlers, they’d be bankrupt.
‘Below the line’. More like below the belt.
Oh, yeah, and hiring media representatives.
… and trying to hire judges.
BTW, Apple doesn’t need to advertise more. They’re quality rather than substance even in advertising and a few quality ads go much further than a dump load of bad Samsung commercials.
This is just a drop in the bucket. According to Asymco dot com Samsung spent $12 Billion last year on telecom marketing. And, is on a $14B run rate for 2013.
They need more money to be convincing because they have the SameSong