Thu, Mar 01, 2012 page11

• Samsung’s Android edge puts squeeze on its rivals

  CROWDED TABLE: At least six handset makers are jostling for position on Android, which makes Nokia’s CEO happy that it opted to go for Windows Phone

  • Bloomberg
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  Google Inc’s Android has surged past Apple Inc’s iPhone to become the biggest smartphone platform, attracting a crowd of phonemakers. Yet Samsung Electronics Co’s growing dominance may threaten the software’s success and crimp sales growth for some competitors.

  Companies such as HTC Corp (宏達電) and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc risk being squeezed between South Korea’s Samsung and China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為). HTC, which introduced its HTC One phone this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, shifted its focus to Android in 2009. Motorola Mobility Holdings also turned to Android to reverse a three-year sales slump.

  Nokia Oyj chief executive officer Stephen Elop, who decided against using Android and instead teamed up with Microsoft Corp’s Windows Phone platform to revive the Finnish company’s fortunes, watches the crowded Android market with relief.

  “There are certain players who are quite strong in Android, others who have become less strong, there’s a balancing going out there,” Elop said in Barcelona. “If we had made a decision to go Android, how would we be feeling right now? I feel much better being in the place where we have a unique and differentiated point of view.”

  At least a half a dozen different handset makers are jostling for position on Android, which is available free to any manufacturer. Android’s share jumped to 51 percent of all smartphone sales in the fourth quarter from 31 percent a year earlier, according to Gartner Inc.

  Among individual companies, Samsung’s share of the global smartphone market climbed to 22.5 percent in the fourth quarter from 9.4 percent a year earlier and Huawei’s more than doubled to 3.5 percent from 1.4 percent, according to researcher IDC.

  HTC’s market share dropped to 6.4 percent from 8.6 percent while Motorola fell to 3.3 percent from 4.8 percent.

  It’s a fall from grace for HTC, which briefly was the largest smartphone maker in the US market in the third quarter of last year as consumers waited for the latest version of the iPhone to come out, according to researcher Canalys.

  “You’re in a tough spot if you have to compete with Samsung on quality and Huawei on cost,” said Matt Thornton, an analyst at Avian Securities in Boston, Massachusetts, who’s at the show in Spain.

  HTC chief executive officer Peter Chou’s (周永明) retort is that analysts forecasting these sales decline lack sufficient insight into HTC’s product lineup.

  “We respect peoples’ opinions, they have an opinion based on what they see, that’s fine, but they don’t know what we’re working on,” Chou said in an interview in Barcelona on Sunday. “So there’s always a gap.”

  Samsung, the world’s second-largest handset maker after Apple, said this week that it plans to double sales of smartphones and tablet computers this year with a wider range of its Galaxy-branded devices. In Barcelona, the company is releasing the Galaxy Beam, which it says is the world’s thinnest smartphone and also can double as a video projector.

  Samsung has thrived because it can create exciting new touch-screen devices by drawing on the strength and size of its design team that also crafts televisions and other electronics goods, said Tavis McCourt, a Morgan Keegan analyst who’s also attending the show.

  At the opposite end of the spectrum, Huawei, China’s largest handset maker, has excelled by selling smartphones cheaper than others, making life difficult for HTC or Motorola to go after the low end.

  “Huawei is always going to be able to compete on price, and they have great distribution in India and China,” both key growth markets, McCourt said.

  Motorola Mobility chief executive officer Sanjay Jha made the decision to focus on Android about four years ago to reverse slumping sales. Helped by the popularity of models like the Motorola Droid and a reinvented version of the Razr, mobile device sales stopped shrinking and last quarter rose 5 percent to US$2.5 billion from a year earlier.

  In Barcelona, Motorola Mobility has showcased a new Razr variant with MotoCast, software that allows consumers to stream content from a desktop computer to a smartphone.
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