Queue a week of market share posts on Daring Fireball.
LOL - you got downvoted but I think it's funny. Gruber has a pet peeve with market share, for sure - I guess it's because of Google and Android fanboys' crowing about 800,000 activations per day.
That said - Gruber is absolutely right. Whenever I go to the mall there's three or four Samsung "flagship" models on sale - those I consider direct competitors to the iPhone. The Note, the Galaxy SII, the Nexus.
Then there's about 10 or 15 varieties of Samsung Android cheap phones. And these get snapped up like the mid-range Nokias used to. They cost $100 - $150 vs the $600 high end models. They have smaller screens and run Android 2.3.
These phones get grouped in the smartphone category and "win" it for Samsung, even though the way people use them is anything but smartphone: They take pictures, send messages, and make phone calls. Facebook? Nah. Email? Nope. Web - try it on a processor as slow as these, you won't try it again. It's ******. They're better than the "complete garbage" Nokia Symbian phones but they're still 95% dumb phone.
If you have $100 or $200 - these cheapo Samsung smartphones are the best deal by far. Nothing wrong with it.
I just wouldn't count them in the smartphone category.
I see Android's position as perilous right now - they're on the verge of losing to the iPhone. It's really Samsung vs. Apple - the other vendors are irrelevant. And Samsung has so much power over Android now, they might replace the ad platform with their own, they might start focusing on Bada, their in-house platform. Android is now solely dependent on Samsung. And that wasn't the plan - the plan was to create a powerful platform that wins as vendors compete and drive prices down, and make devices in all shapes and forms to win over the iPhone.
I think Android will remain on top of the heap for unit numbers for a while to come, for years, but I also think they're truly on the verge of becoming a niche player in the high end. The high end is getting clobbered by the much superior platform that's iOS.
In short: They're selling tons of units, but without strengthening the platform. It's fragmented out the wazoo.
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S5660, S5830, S5690, S5570 are showing up at 'less than 400' without a contract for me. (Some less than 200)
Those all have higher volumes than the 32gb 4s.
Dude, There;s about 10 - 15 models (15 if you count the older ones, these things rack up revisions really fast) in the mall here in Thailand right now that cost $100 - $150 without subsidy. They're all over Asia.
Samsung Cooper, Y, Me, Galaxy Mini, et cetera. Lots of colorful names, small screens, and low prices. These sell by the bucketload. Everyone who can't afford an iPhone buys them - they're as close as you can get to an iPhone for $150.
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The cheapest Samsung smartphone you can buy without contract, anywhere in the world, is $400.
When you say "the world" is that like the "world series" in Baseball?
Samsung models for $150 are everywhere here in South East Asia. Samsung is wiping the floor with Nokia and LG for this market segment.