iPhone and the Future of Samsung

Thursday, May 3, 2007 | 2 comments

Samsung views the iPhone as a mixed blessing. In many ways, they are the company that is best prepared to cope with the challenge of actually coming up with a competing product, and they seem to be working on one: the F700.

There is also speculation that they are doing the main processor chip for Apple, which strikes me as contradictory to the above. Apple’s lips are pressed.

Interestingly, Samsung has multiple businesses and skill-sets that position them as a potential threat and a possible supplier to Apple:

* Presence in the Consumer Electronics space, including cellular phone.

* Excellent design skills, reminder of SONY during its heydeys.

* Strong chip design and manufacturing capabilities, especially in SiP design, used by major vendors as a key hyper-integration and miniaturization technique.

* Leading position in the Flash market, a key memory technology for the handhelds and cellphones that has become increasingly super-critical.

* Ability to play not only in the US market, but also in China and India.

In many ways, the iPhone plays to Samsung’s strengths and versatility, offering it the opportunity to come in as the somewhat lower-priced alternative to the iPhone, and win market share, if it chooses to position itself as an iPhone competitor.

Ofcourse, to this day, no one has been able to compete with the iPod, which dominates with near 80% market share.

Will the iPhone story be the same?

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