Samsung and Apple have been the biggest smartphone manufacturers for several months now and both companies are going to present their financial results for Q1 2012 this week. Those from Wall Street Journal they thought of making a comparison between the business models of the two companies and everything can only be summed up by the picture above. If Apple focuses on the sale of a single type of smartphone, those from Samsung produce several models to cover as large a part of the market as possible, and although they do not earn much from each sale, overall they obtain a more than good profit.
Apple, the world's most valuable company, sells just one phone, the iPhone. The Cupertino, Calif., company emphasizes design and profitability over sales. It also invests heavily in its consumer brand and its tightly controlled retail stores, and it benefits from a strong ecosystem of software and apps. Meanwhile, Samsung, the world's largest tech company by revenue last year, goes for scale. The South Korean company is a fast-follower that places its bets broadly, creating multiple versions of myriad products such as its Galaxy smartphones to suit partners' needs. It maximizes profits by controlling its own manufacturing.
Apple earns a lot from the sale of each iPhone, it sells almost as much as Samsung, but it has different principles. Although the two companies use different business strategies, in the end they reach exactly the same final result, that is, almost equal profit and an almost equal number of smartphones sold in each fiscal quarter/year.
Their divergent paths are proof that vastly different models can prevail. Apple and Samsung are each close to commanding 25% of the global market share of smartphone unit shipments, according to research firm IDC, which estimates the smartphone market will reach $219 billion in sales in 2012. The two companies were the only major smartphone makers to gain share in the fourth quarter. Apple's market share reached 23.5%, up from 16% at the end of 2010. Samsung held 22.8% of the market in the same quarter, up from 9.4%. In addition, Apple and Samsung combined to grab 91% of the operating profits of all cellphone makers in the fourth quarter, up from 61% last year, according to Strategy Analytics, a London-based market research firm.
and the world blames them