If we look at smartphones today, it seems a reach has been peaked.
Storage, no problem. Speed, no problem. Camera, no problem. These, among many things are not improving year on year as they used to, and you can't tell performance difference for apps like email, Spotify, YouTube, what's app etc between A8 and S9.
It is no wonder that sales are falling, with S9 being the worse performer since s3. All previous phones had major changes, yet s8 and S9 having very little. Similarly, note 8 and note 9 having very few difference (adding Bluetooth pen or 4000mah battery isn't groundbreaking).
Meanwhile, Chinese companies are taking over large number of marketshare.
This is why I mention about Samsung going through IBM route. IBM was major player in laptops and computers. Selling good quality products. But it faced stiff competition that eventually led to selling its Lenovo brand to a Chinese company.
I don't forsee Samsung selling its galaxy brand and perhaps the premium smartphones to continue in coming years. But is there anything premium left to do in smartphones? There is screen fingerprint. Or hidden camera. No one needs faster speed except gamers (my S7 opens application just as fine, but back in days s3 and s1 had day night difference with normal apps). Folding phone is an innovation, but it wouldn't be less than $1500 (considering note 9 is 1300), leaving many to not being able to afford it.
The more amazing that are added to phone, the more expensive it also gets. Consider s3/iPhone 4 when it was $600 to S9 that's $960 or iPhone x $1300.
IBM took software route to survive and some more business oriented service. But Samsung is doing hardware manufacturing. This is OLED displays, memory chips, software (bixby, tizen) and also investing heavily in cameras. And as revenues from smartphone fall, revenue from everything else smartphone related continues to rise.
It will certainly be interesting to see where Samsung stands after Galaxy 10. It will become the best selling phone in Samsung's history, but how well will Galaxy S11 sell? What other innovation can S11 bring other than 5G (S9 already does 1.2gbps), speed or camera?
Samsung's biggest market is semiconductors....that's where their bread and butter is. RAM, CPUs, Nand memory....they sell chips to competitors like Apple to use In the iPhone, and other devices. their speeding in smartphones is very minimal this year.
Yes but Samsung used to have large revenue in smartphones before, which is falling now. So I do see them venturing even more into other stuff that requires very high R and D while letting the Chinese fight over market share with sub $600 phones.
IBM sold out because they did poor business decisions. PS/2 and OS/2... Proprietary technology and proprietary porta again and again... Their last desktop range that was a disaster...
However they lacked vision with the ThinkPad. It dominated the professional and education laptop market until about 2012, six years after Lenovo tool over the laptop brand
