[notastartup]

why is it that Samsung has been able to capitalize on this while Sharp or Sony has not? If this was a 80% software problem, why is Samsung still doing so well, and likely to continue even though their software capacity won't beat any American startup?

[lmm]

I remember the Sharp PDAs you had to import. That was 80% of the iphone right there. But they never seemed to market them (Samsung isn't particularly clever with their marketing but they throw enough money at it to make it work), or even be particularly interested in selling them abroad. I think they must've not been willing or able to do the carrier negotiation - our subsidized phone structures are a bit weird. Or just overestimated the popularity of wifi in the rest of the world based on that in a small, mostly urban country.

Sony on the other hand made some good stuff but was always just too controlling. The hardware was nice but you had to buy overpriced Memory Stick storage because Sony couldn't bear to use a standard format. And in the pre-android days you had to sell your soul to get a dev kit. (I realise Apple gets away with all of this but Sony doesn't have a reality distortion field). I get the feeling Japanese customers are willing to trust Sony in a way that foreign ones aren't.

[patio11]

I have no great answer to this question (I'm only peripherally aware of how Samsung works and the entire Android ecosystem is a bit of a mystery to me), but if you do, you could get a lot of bookings on the Japanese equivalents of MSNBC.

[w1ntermute]

Here's one piece of the puzzle: http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/06/apple-samsung-sma...

> It was the same old pattern: when caught red-handed [for patent infringement], countersue, claiming Samsung actually owned the patent or another one that the plaintiff company had used. Then, as the litigation dragged on, snap up a greater share of the market and settle when Samsung imports were about to be barred. Sharp had filed its lawsuit in 2007; as the lawsuit played out, Samsung built up its flat-screen business until, by the end of 2009, it held 23.6 percent of the global market in TV sets, while Sharp had only 5.4 percent. All in all, not a bad outcome for Samsung.

The Koreans are much more ruthless than the Japanese, who have gone soft.