“The suffocating grip of Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc. on the smartphone industry is being felt across Asia as a growing number of companies quit the business or rack up hefty losses,” Daisuke Wakabayashi and Mayumi Negishi report for The Wall Street Journal.
“In the widening gap between the smartphone industry’s have and have-nots, Japan’s mobile phone manufacturers stand out for its struggles because the country’s phones were revered for being smart before smartphones emerged. During the feature-phone era, Japan’s mobile phone makers developed technological marvels that allowed users to watch TV, pay for items electronically and other features that are now commonplace with smartphones,” Wakabayashi and Negishi report. “Confident in the technical capability of their phones, Japanese firms were late to spot the smartphone shift and were forced to scramble with me-too products that looked stale next to Apple Inc.’s iPhone… ‘Apple has established its brand. Japanese smartphone makers came in too late. Probably out of 10 friends, only one will have a phone that is not iPhone,’ said Nobuaki Toma, a 30-year-old who is considering upgrading his iPhone 4 to an iPhone 5.”
Wakabayashi and Negishi report, “Apple and Samsung account for roughly half of all smartphones sold, but they share nearly all of the industry’s profits. Research firm Strategy Analytics said Samsung and Apple generated $5.2 billion and $4.6 billion, respectively, in handset profits in the second quarter.”
MacDailyNews Take: Try to keep up WSJ, that Strategy Analytics has been thoroughly debunked. See: No, Samsung has not dethroned Apple in mobile profits – July 28, 2013
Wakabayashi and Negishi report, “By comparison, current No. 3 LG Electronics Inc.’s mobile division posted a $54 million operating profit with a 5.3% share in the latest quarter… Also on Wednesday, Panasonic said losses deepened at its mobile business. In the three months to June, Panasonic said its mobile arm lost ¥5.4 billion versus a ¥3.7 billion loss in the year-ago period. Sales also fell 14%.”
Read more in the full article here.
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