Apple, for the first time in years, is hearing footsteps, reports Brian X. Chen in Monday’s New York Times.
The maker of iPhones, iPads and iPods has never faced a challenger able to make a truly popular and profitable smartphone or tablet â€" not Dell, not Hewlett-Packard, not Nokia, not BlackBerry â€" until Samsung Electronics.
The South Korean manufacturer’s Galaxy S III smartphone is the first device to run neck and neck with Apple’s iPhone in sales. Armed with other Galaxy phones and tablets, Samsung has emerged as a potent challenger to Apple, the top consumer electronics maker. The two companies are the only ones turning profits in the highly competitive mobile phone industry, with Apple taking 72 percent of the earnings and Samsung the rest.
Yet these two rivals, who have battled in the marketplace and in the courts worldwide, could not be more different. Samsung Electronis, a major part of South Korea’s expansive Samsung Group, makes computer chips and flat-panel displays as well as a wide range of consumer products including refrigerators, washers and dryers, cameras, vacuum cleaners, PCs, printers and TVs.
Where Apple stakes its success on creating new markets and dominating them, as it did with the iPhone and iPad, Samsung invests heavily in studying existing markets and innovating inside them.
