adminin the battle for smartphone supremacy in salesrooms and courtrooms around the world.
Jobs passed the reins to his right-hand man Tim Cook on Wednesday, saying he could no longer fulfil his duties, raising fears the health of the Silicon Valley icon had worsened.
While Apple and analysts highlighted Cook’s experience, as well as Jobs’ new role as chairman and the company’s extensive management bench, his departure will cause ripples across the Pacific at South Korea’s Samsung.
More than any other firm, Samsung’s fortunes are tied to Apple, both as a competitor and supplier of components.
The companies are fierce rivals, with Samsung’s Galaxy range of smartphones and tablet computers running on Google’s Android operating system seen as the main competitor to Apple’s game-changing iPhones and iPads.
“Even before Steve Jobs’ (resignation), Samsung was getting more and more optimistic that they can actually take on Apple in the smartphone arena,” said Mark Newman, a former director of strategy at Samsung, where he worked for six years.
“The game is really now Samsung’s to lose . . . They are picking up market share because of the change in dynamics in the smartphone industry,” added Newman, now a senior analyst for global memory and consumer electronics at Sanford C. Bernstein.
The Korean giant has taken big strides and is backing itself to unseat Apple.
Samsung this week unveiled four new cheaper smartphones targeting fast-growing emerging markets – again setting it on a collision course with Apple, which sources say is readying a cheaper, 8 gigabyte iPhone.
When Samsung group executives asked Hong Won-pyo, executive vice president of Samsung’s mobile division, at their weekly meeting on Wednesday if Samsung could overtake Apple in the smartphone market any time soon, he told them he was confident , according to a person at the meeting. Hong was speaking just hours before Jobs made his announcement to quit as CEO.
Apple and Samsung are now scrapping for top spot in the smartphone market, having overtaken the market leader for the past decade, Finland’s Nokia, in the second quarter. Samsung’s smartphone sales soared more than 500 percent in the second quarter, easily eclipsing Apple’s 142 percent growth, though Apple sold about one million more units. Nokia sales fell 30 percent.
News of Jobs’ move helped Samsung shares rise 2,4 percent in Seoul yesterday. The broader Korean market was up 0,6 percent.
“Investors were concerned that Apple would encroach into Android’s turf, but Jobs’ exit offers opportunities for Samsung to expand its smartphone market share at a time when Nokia is struggling,” said Jeon Nam-joong, a fund manager at Consus Asset Management, which owns shares in Samsung.
Samsung has already stormed past its Asian rivals. Its market value of around US$110 billion is comfortably more than Sony, Toshiba and Panasonic combined.
However, Samsung is still less than half Apple’s size, which at close to US$350 billion has it competing with Exxon Mobil for the world’s most valuable company.
Both Samsung and Apple will face increasingly stiff competition from upstart rivals in China and Taiwan, however.
Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and ZTE Corp, China’s top two telecommunications equipment makers, are stealing a march both in traditional network gear and, increasingly, high-end phones.
Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC is another that is making headway and could benefit from any erosion of Apple’s dominance.
Samsung still trails Apple badly in tablet sales. Apple racked up 14 million iPad sales in the first half, versus analysts’ sales estimates of about 7,5 million Samsung tablet products for all of 2011. – Reuters.
Online Reporter