First there was Samsung, a meteoric rise with a new phone that bore a remarkable resemblance to the iPhone. Seemed like cheating, no real price was ever paid.
Now those chickens have come home to roost. Samsung is getting pressure on the high end by Apple’s offerings and on the low end by China’s own meteor, Xiaomi. It’s deliciously apropos to watch Samsung’s lunch get eaten by another blatant copycat.
If you haven’t been following Xiami’s antics, start with this post. Then this one. And for dessert, this beauty.
Samsung’s recent efforts are failing because they are no longer a “copycat”, but a fast follower. For instance, look at their new phones. No one can mistake them for apple products. They are badly designed in both hardware and software but “follows” and have a similar feature set to an iphone. Now look at Xioami’s stuff. They are better designed because they are a copycat of good designs. For instance, look at the miipad. It doesn’t look quite like a ipad mini but more like a blown up iphone 5c. But because of this, xiaomi’s better designed products will never come out in a country with enforced copyright protection.
What’s further bothersome about both Xiaomi is that unlike samsung, when they’re not copying Apple they don’t do a shitty job.
http://thenextweb.com/asia/2014/04/23/xiaomi-launches-two-routers-and-a-revamped-set-top-box-will-expand-to-10-more-countries-this-year/
That router looks really nice, and the tray for a laptop hard drive is even nicer.
Samsung is trying to jump ahead of Apple by beginning to iterate on products that Apple is just rumored to be thinking about. The whole ridiculously unusable samsung watches are signs of that. They’ll just keep issuing tweaks and putting no thought into anything just using sales numbers to set direction.
It’s sad that they have to copy, but there is real danger for Apple here in that mobile devices are fast approaching the commodity stage. If Mi can offer a broadly similar product, and yet differentiate it by also offering the things that Apple refuses to offer, then they might draw significant sales away from them in future iterations.
For instance I’ve been waiting for Apple to offer a good “all in one” portable small tablet since the first day I heard of the iPhone, and even though it’s seven years now, they still haven’t done it. Even though I’m a die hard Apple supporter and avid buyer and user of their products since Mac Classic days, a “Mi Pad mini” with the ability to make phone calls and a digitiser so I can draw on it would likely turn me into a MiPad Android customer quite quickly. I’m sick of having to buy a $900.00 phone and a $700.00 tablet each year, paying exorbitant data fees and never getting quite what I want anyway.
Android kind of sucks, and you’d have to order the Mi Pad online because it would be illegal in the west, but those are small things compared to simply offering the product that I have been looking for all this time. If it really is as well put together as an Apple product, offers the functions that I want and the only downside is Android, I would swallow that bile and buy one.
Exactly. It’s like Samsung just poops out “smart” watches for use as evidence of “prior art” in some future court case with Apple. Of course, Apple’s “iWatch” will be vastly superior. (And heavily patented, no doubt.)
@Prof Peabody wrote, “there is real danger for Apple here in that mobile devices are fast approaching the commodity stage.”
Yup, the same way that Apple can no longer sell 1985-class Macintosh computers.
Apple is not a bleeding edge products company, but it’s a good 5 years ahead of much of its competition, and meanwhile, working on all sorts of products that competitors will take time to catch up with.
If they have to move on to new ideas, new capabilities, new products, and bear the risk of new products that the marketplace rejects, that’s just the bed that they chose to lie in.
It’s also something that helps advance tech for all of us. A healthy tech ecosystem depends on invention, innovation and finally, standardization/cost reduction.
Wow. I congratulate you, er, no, we all congratulate you on composing a near-perfect “concern troll.” Whether you meant to or not.
You pulled together the following elements, just like a concern troll is supposed to:
Acknowledgement of the original post (Xiaomi’s copying), in an attempt to look “on topic.” Because a pure name-calling / hot-button-pushing troll would alienate everyone and would be far off-topic.
Phony-sounding “I’m a die hard Apple supporter” story to fool some readers into thinking you’re a die hard Apple supporter. In attempt to add credibility to your post and credibility to yourself as a poster.
Phony “concern” for Apple. As in “… but there is real danger for Apple here …” This makes you sound like you actually care about Apple, and may touch on some readers’ concern that Xiaomi is actually either a threat or somehow immune to punishment for copying. (If anything, they’re a threat to Samsung.)
Name-dropping (“Mi Pad mini”, “MiPad Android”) to make sure the product name appears correctly at least once.
Specious logic that might fool weak-minded fence-sitters. E.g. “… a digitiser so I can draw on it …” and “… sick of having to buy a $900 phone and $700 tablet each year…” Oh please. Who are you trying to fool?
So do you post similar “concern trolls” on Samsung blogs too? Because Samsung should be much more worried about Xiaomi than Apple should be. Xiaomi can and will win the race to the bottom vs. Samsung.
Further proof that the hardware is the easy part. The low-hanging fruit. The OS and apps are vastly harder to get right, let alone copy. Just look at the mess Google has created with massively-fragmented Android.
And, finally, the ecosystem and infrastructure are the hardest things to copy. If you rush to catch up, you end up with something like the Google Play weed patch. Where the number of malware apps quadrupled between 2011 and 2013. And you end up with competing Android app stores of varying trustworthiness. For example, there are dozens of “alternative” Android app stores in China, if not hundreds. Good luck downloading malware-free apps from them.
if you’re sick of buying a new iPhone and a new iPad every year, then you’re doing it wrong — normal people have no reason to buy that frequently, and fanboys like myself do it because we like to.
as for commodity concerns — that happened to the desktop and laptop markets, and who’s still leading sales growth and eating all the profits? apple.
I’ll sleep fine tonite. cook will too.