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Sounds like Samsung made the exact right move then. They let google eat all the cost of launching and maintaing the OS, and they just sell hardware. They're the

Sounds like Samsung made the exact right move then. They let google eat all the cost of launching and maintaing the OS, and they just sell hardware. They're the only company other than Apple making money off smartphones, so while it's fun to use hindsight to make fun of Samsung's missed opportunity, they're actually doing okay from this.

balladeer 13y ago
OTOH, Samsung's software r&d prowess, even today, is far from the standard needed to maintain a top class (mobile) OS, leave alone creating or polishing it. You can imagine where it would have been at that time. So yeah, they made the right move knowing their strength and weakness.
hristov 13y ago
Google makes plenty of profits out of smartphones. They just don't make it from selling hardware. But a big part of their revenue comes from mobile (they do not tell you what part, unfortunately) and android is very profitable for them as it assures them access to that revenue without having to pay traffic acquisition costs.
- adventured 13y ago
  And critically keeps them from being locked out of the mobile market by a dominate Samsung / Apple / Microsoft / whomever / combination of. Which is exactly what it was meant to accomplish and why Google was willing to destroy their relationship with Apple to move forward with Android. People like to claim Google doesn't make money with Android, which is a very shallow conclusion: if they had been locked out of the mobile market, it could have buried the company entirely, stranding their future on a languishing desktop.
yashg 13y ago
Also I think Android spread like wildfire because it was owned by Google who allowed all manufacturers to use it for free, or may be at a lower price (I don't know). The key point is Android being available to various hardware makers contributed big to its success. If it had been owned by Samsung it would not have been different from Symbian or other manufacturer specific operating systems.

balladeer 13y ago

OTOH, Samsung's software r&d prowess, even today, is far from the standard needed to maintain a top class (mobile) OS, leave alone creating or polishing it. You can imagine where it would have been at that time. So yeah, they made the right move knowing their strength and weakness.

hristov 13y ago

Google makes plenty of profits out of smartphones. They just don't make it from selling hardware. But a big part of their revenue comes from mobile (they do not tell you what part, unfortunately) and android is very profitable for them as it assures them access to that revenue without having to pay traffic acquisition costs.

adventured 13y ago
And critically keeps them from being locked out of the mobile market by a dominate Samsung / Apple / Microsoft / whomever / combination of. Which is exactly what it was meant to accomplish and why Google was willing to destroy their relationship with Apple to move forward with Android. People like to claim Google doesn't make money with Android, which is a very shallow conclusion: if they had been locked out of the mobile market, it could have buried the company entirely, stranding their future on a languishing desktop.

yashg 13y ago

Also I think Android spread like wildfire because it was owned by Google who allowed all manufacturers to use it for free, or may be at a lower price (I don't know). The key point is Android being available to various hardware makers contributed big to its success. If it had been owned by Samsung it would not have been different from Symbian or other manufacturer specific operating systems.