[blub]

You really have no idea how much crap Samsung is doing. Their entire business model is basically copy what the established players are doing, but not obviously enough to get sued and then undercut them on price. They screwed up once with Apple, but otherwise it works fine for them.

Then there's the bizarre sexist ads, refusing to pay the return flight for bloggers if they don't praise Samsung and other stories.

I wouldn't buy anything from them even if their customer support were great.

[Nursie]

In much of the world Samsung are the established player.

I'm not sure which 'established players' you think they're copying. They were the first to market a phablet at all...

[blub]

Miele and Nokia come to mind. Dyson too, although they dropped their latest lawsuit.

Not sure about Sony, I've only heard rumors about that.

I also realized that I focused just on copying and forgot about all the other nice things they did - see wikipedia.

[Nursie]

Ah, I guess we are talking well beyond mobile phones now. I guess what I find odd there is the idea that they copy established players, when they are an establshed player, one of the worlds largest.

What did they copy from Miele?

Nokia effectively disestablished themselves some years ago now so I'm not sure they're relevant any more.

In a lot of tech they are pioneers, I'm not sure it's fair to say their business model is based on copying when they are frequently ahead of the market and even making it (phones). NVMe drives are another area they are leading at the moment.

[bArray]

"Then there's the bizarre sexist ads, refusing to pay the return flight for bloggers if they don't praise Samsung and other stories."

Got sources for that? Quite interested in learning more.

[morb]

The stranded bloggers story discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4468037

[kuschku]

Yet, they absolutely dominate the smart phone market outside of the US, having not just a relative majority, but an absolute majority.

[neotek]

That's true, but market share is a pointless metric, since ultimately all it takes to get market share is money - the more you spend on advertising, the more you discount your product, the more people will own it regardless of how good or bad it is.

What matters is profit share, and Apple vacuums up nearly 100% of the profit in the smartphone world, and meanwhile Samsung silently prays that some day it will be within earshot of just breaking even.

[Nursie]

Matters to who? Why?

I don't give much of a crap if my vendor makes a profit, I care about user experience and app support. A big market share certainly impacts the latter.

Samsung do make profit on their smartphones, by the way, not sure what makes you think otherwise.

( Edit -- 1Q 2016 they reported a profit of around 3.3 billion dollars on their mobile operations, source - http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/28/samsung-has-got-its-mojo-back... )