Everyone has said it and everyone has heard it – the smartphone market in the U.S. is not a happy place if you are not an Apple or a Samsung. 2012 fourth quarter results show that the two tech giants dominated 69% of the market between them, up from 62% last year. iPhone was in the lead with 39% and Samsung phones took 30% with the Galaxy S3 at the top. All the other players – Blackberry, Nokia, Motorola, HTC, etc. – scraped away at single digit percentages.
Last month, Blackberry made an ambitious move by launching a new operating system, the BB10, and two smartphone devices that went along with it. The newly appointed Global Creative Director, Alicia Keys, described her personal return journey to the brand after trying several competitors. It was all a part of the makeover as the Canadian phone maker tries to score the customers it lost to Apple and Android phones. Nokia has a revival story in mind too, but it has chosen the budget-phone track with Windows Phone OS. HTC believes that the answer lies in more aggressive marketing in addition to targeting emerging markets.
However, these smartphone companies have a steep slope to climb, if consumption patterns are to be believed. Roger Entner, an analyst at Recon Analytics, was quoted saying that known choices will continue to dominate the cutting-edge market as it becomes increasingly mature. Risk-averse consumers are hard to drive toward habit-change. Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research, created an analogy between smartphone brands and PC. She claims that Blackberry, HTC and Motorola seem to be going the PC way.
The key reasons for Samsung’s success include deep-pocket marketing budgets and a very good relation with mobile carriers. Samsung has been a beast with marketing, both pro-Samsung and anti-iPhone. The South Korean tech giant has unabashedly positioned its Galaxy SIII as the iPhone alternative. Its wide range of electronics and the fact that it has phones in every price level also boosts Samsung. Mobile carriers like Sprint and T-Mobile have been enthusiastic about featuring and promoting it at their stores. T-Mobile has a special “Samsung Galaxy Zone” and Sprint offers the largest spread of Samsung products.
These deep-seated arrangements and large marketing investments are hard to match. A lot of tech companies are therefore looking at gaining gumption in emerging market first.
