“Google has become the number one mobile platform on the planet, and one major reason is that Samsung happens to sell more mobile handsets than any other company. When it comes to profits, Samsung divides 100% with Apple, which means losses and very tiny profits for all the rest,” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl. “Google doesn’t make a huge amount of cash from Android, although I expect things will improve as more and more apps are sold in the Play Store. But not if Samsung has anything to do with it.”
“Samsung plans to award third-party developers to entice them to develop Galaxy-specific apps. Not just Android apps, but apps optimized for Samsung’s hardware and custom features,” Steinberg writes. “It’s a sure thing that improving the quality of Android apps is a good thing. In terms of the numbers of apps, Google and Apple are toe-to-toe, but the iOS offers better quality software… One particularly irksome problem in Android-land is fragmentation. A huge number of owners of Android gear are using older, sometimes much older, versions of the OS. This complicates the job for developers who want to take advantage of the latest and greatest OS features, but still want to reach as many potential customers as possible for paid software. Compromises often have to be made, which is why many Android apps are flaky, poorly designed.”
Steinberg writes, “By pushing proprietary apps and features, Samsung appears to be working overtime to separate their gear from Android. If a Galaxy-specific software market develops, what stops Samsung from forking Android and rolling as many of these apps as possible into their own proprietary storefront? If that happens, where does that leave Google?”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, sooner than later, both thieves find themselves up Shit Creek without a paddle.
Invent your own stuff. Don’t steal Apple’s IP and then, no less, do a piss poor job with your stolen products.
