In established markets like the US and Europe, smartphone saturation is as high as 61%. Samsung’s dominance reigns in such markets. However, emerging smartphone markets mostly in Asia and Africa have been another great player. Users in these markets are looking for affordable, customized android smartphone – and it seems Samsung isn’t ready as yet to fulfill these needs. According to the latest developer economics survey quarterly report by VisionMobile, Samsung sold 67.7 million smartphones in the same time-period when ‘Other’ vendors sold 67.4 million devices. The ‘Other’ sellers are small companies that are able to make smartphones using off-the-shelf hardware platforms from Mediatek and Qualcomm. These vendors strike have been striking deals with telecommunications companies in Africa and Asia to get a ready market for their gadgets.
Fierce competition has been driving costs within the android camp down. This has seen bigwig manufacturers such as HTC lose ground on profits as they compete for prices with Huawei and ZTE. As these hundreds of vendors establish their roots in emerging markets, Samsung’s device margins will be nibbled to death. We’ll have to see whether Samsung will unleash yet another shot from their salvo of marketing strategies to offset the imbalances.
