Probably wrong to make the journalist ‘the story’, but earlier tonight I was called by Murad Armed at The Times for my views on the Samsung Galaxy S4 launch tomorrow. What was newsworthy is that although Murad calls me often for my views, it is almost always related to Apple.
As I said in Dow hits all time high – Apple still suffers, the ‘cool’ mantle that was once Apple’s has been well and truly taken by Samsung. The excitement which once surrounded an Apple launch has now shifted to Samsung. That change has happened in just a few months.
According to Gartner, Samsung now has a 30.3% share of the global smartphone market compared with Apple’s 19.1% share.
The real winner in all this though is Google Android which Gartner reckons will have a 39.2% share in 2013. So it was not surprising that Murad also wanted to talk about the surprise move of Android’s long-term boss at Google – Andy Rubin. He’s moving to an unspecified new post at Google with Sundar Pichai – Google’s Chrome/Gmail/Cloud supremo – adding to his portfolio. Whatever the reasons, Rubin should be incredibly proud of his achievements. Few would have predicted the massive success of Android – well, I admit I didn’t.
Where does all this leave Apple? It is enormously depressing that the only rumours circulating this week around Apple concerns whether they will announce a special dividend as a way of returning cash to shareholders and boost the beleaguered share price. Where are all the new Apple innovations that we yearn? Nowhere, it seems.