Samsung Electronics Co. continues to establish its market leadership as the highest grossing smartphone maker in the congested Android smartphone industry. By offering a broad-selection of models, at different price-points and feature-options, the company’s Android smartphone profits are astonishing 95 percent of the revenues earned by the Android smartphone market. The South Korean giant firmly grasped an individual profit of as much as $5.1 billion from the total $5.3 billion posted by Android smartphone industry for the first quarter ended March, according to the findings issued by Strategy Analytics. The Samsung’s domination of Android in 2013 does not come as a surprise to those within the industry.

Embattled foot-solider to market leader

The South Korean smartphone giant has come a long way from its Galaxy 10.1 series launch two years ago. Following a long-drawn patent infringement suit filed against it by Apple Inc., Samsung Electronics Co.’s revenues and profits were deeply affected. Despite a presence in over 15 countries the company could not sell and had to fight against bans in Australia, Germany, and Denmark; and only with a US court ruling in April 2012 was Samsung Electronics Co. finally vindicated.

Then began the fairy tale ascendancy of Samsung’s domination of Android market segment and today the Android smartphone profits are iconic.

Amazing Samsung Statistics

The findings indicated that the net earnings for Samsung Electronics Co. amounted to staggering $5.1 billion for the three-month period ended March 2013. Shockingly, the report by data research group Strategy Analytics pinpointed that this was nearly 95 percent of the total earnings of the dominating Android smartphone industry. In addition, the group underlined in its report that :“An efficient supply chain, sleek products and crisp marketing were among the main drivers of Samsung’s impressive profitability.”

In contrast was LG Electronics Inc.’s revenue earnings at modest $100million. LG Electronics Inc. is positioned third on the leader-board of Android smartphone industry and lagged appreciably behind Samsung Electronics Co., clocking just 2.5 percent of the global market share.

In the period between January and March, the number of Android shipments increased achieving new highs of 161 million units leading to Samsung’s domination of Android of this market segment. Strategy Analytics reported that with record sales the Android platform had penetrated nearly 75.2 percent of the smartphone market.

Neil Mawston, in his position as Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, also underlined the fact that Samsung Electronics Co. was ‘the undisputed king’ of Android. He also found it interesting that soon the South Korean giant might become a great influencer in ‘Android ecosystem’ due to higher market power and attempts to ask for exclusive updates of Android software, overriding requests from competing hardware makers.

Furthermore, the figures also revealed that Samsung Electronics Co. had in reality earned more profits by using Android OS than Google Inc. itself, which is the original developer of this open source operating system.

In an attempt to circumvent domination by the Samsung Electronics Co. which Google Inc. expected to be a ‘commodity’ rather than a dominant vendor using their operating system, the US-based company has announced that it will be next launching Galaxy S4 running on ‘pure Android flavor’ and not using Samsung’s proprietary software.

Industry Leaders Magazine