I remember when Steve Jobs praised Japanese electronics when he a compared Sony Vaio Tz Laptop to the 'new' macbook air and Xperia phones to the 'new' iphone.
I don't believe Steve Jobs was in the right state of mind when he made that comment. The Vaio Tz laptop looks like a generic bulky laptop. Hardly looks like a macbook air unless you're on psychedelics.
Xperia and iphone? lol... Not even close.
Hmm,
Here's the conventional understanding for the removal
- Samsung's struggle in Japan relative to other markets due to strong preference for domestic brands
Join us for a look at just how all-encompassing Samsung Japan's rebranding situation has turned out to be. Could it change the tide for the Korean OEM?
www.androidauthority.com
- "the underlying pretense that Japan, as a collective, is unwilling to accept the fact that Korea has surpassed it in terms of mobile technology"
The announcement of the Galaxy S6/Edge for Japan was rather unremarkable, except for the fact that no one wants to mention the name "Samsung". Curious.
www.androidauthority.com
Hence, Samsung Officially announced (and was globally reported) its logo removal strategy in Japan. So, even if there were any such alleged backlash prior to the removal, I don't see making an official announcement being any helpful.
To the contrary, you make it seem like Samsung first removed the emoticons, then received backlash, and in response removed their logo to deceive the Japanese.
So far from what I've searched, the reason for the removal of some of the emoji's, at best, is unknown (
https://blog.emojipedia.org/samsung-puts-japan-back-on-the-map/).
And at the very least is not related to the removal of the Samsung logo as the dates do not add up to support your claim. Based on the link you provided (
https://emojipedia.org/), they were removed after the removal of Samsung's logo in 2015.
- Tokyo tower never had a dedicated look and has been using a generic tower until the change in 2018.
- The map of Japan was removed in 2016 after the removal of the Samsung logo.
- The Japanese doll has never been replaced with hanbok wearing dolls.
https://emojipedia.org/
Further, it is known that other emoticons were also removed, not including the handful of Japan specific ones. Yes, there's only a handful - not so much that requiries a "wall of text" as you claimed.
Now, the crossed Japanese flag that was replaced by the crossed Korean flag in 2015 (couldn't find which was removed first as both are reported to have been removed/replaced in 2015 - early April is all I found regarding the Samsung logo). This perhaps is the only controversial move, only assuming the flag was removed before the Samsung logo.
- However Samsung's smartphone market share in Japan was always struggling in Japan (partly due to brand nationalism), which is the more logical reason behind removing its brand.
This graph shows the market share of mobile vendors in Japan based on over 5 billion monthly page views.
gs.statcounter.com
- Samsung, a Korean company, with already low market share in Japan deciding to replace the crossed Japanese flag emoticon on all their phones (catering towards larger non-Japanese market share) with the missing crossed Korean flag isn't all that unimaginable. Note, there's only one crossed flag (Japanese crossed flag) in the full Unicode Emoji list. So, why the big backlash, if there were any, over a single emoji that only Japan got to enjoy. Perhaps the more understandable backlash would have come from Korea where the market share was much larger, for the lone crossed flag emoji being a Japanese one.
So, I just don't see the drama (mainly blaming Samsung) associating the emoticons and Samsung's logo.
I get the Samsung hate here, and perhaps in Japan (the emoticons were removed for some time after all). Not preferring one brand over another based on preference and subjective opinions is one thing, but unfounded dislike of a brand is just disingenuous.
Takeshima sounds like a right-wing, 2ch Japanese person. They're about as credible as the QANON crowd from 4chan. I actually took the time to look through his posts after reading your post, and his post contains a lot of false and slanderous information about Samsung.
He claims that the high DRAM, NAND and SSD pricing in recent years is due to a collusive duopoly between Samsung and SK Hynix, which is one of the most idiotic things I've ever heard. Has this person been asleep during all of 2015-2020, when GPUs and RAMs were going out of stock all over the world due to the bitcoin bubble and then the lockdowns in 2020? Was NVIDIA and AMD also colluding, because I had a friend buy a mediocre GTX 1050 ti in 2018 for $300+ when its launch price was $150ish. Every single computer part went up in price, not just RAM and SSD.
Samsung and other memory manufacturers correctly realized that the bitcoin rise in 2016-2018 was an unsustainable bubble and declined to expand capacity, since that would have left them with a ton of excess and unused capacity after the demand fell off the cliff. Had they gone through with expansions, they would be left with high fixed costs to set up the factory with potentially no ramp-up phase, because the demand wouldn't be there. This was not solely a Samsung decision. Every memory manufacturer came to the same conclusion and independently declined to expand capacity too much.
His argument also fails the common sense test. The memory fab business also has far more players than the logic fab business, where there is only really 2 companies: TSMC and Samsung at a distant second. The memory fab industry, at that time, had Samsung, Micron, Elpida, Toshiba, SK Hynix, Intel and a few more. Samsung and SK Hynix are in no position to use duopolistic pricing, as their competitors could undercut them and steal marketshare. Samsung's superior manufacturing lead in memory fabrication wouldn't have saved them from aggressive competitor pricing, as people are less picky about RAM + SSD performance than they are about CPU + GPU performance.
Now if you are talking about TSMC monopoly pricing at the sub-10nm logic node, then you would make more sense, but saying Samsung and SK Hynix can use duopolistic pricing in an ultra-competitive industry with many competitors is just non-sense.
The only time there was collusion was years before the the crypto bubble, where Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, Elpida (Japan), Toshiba (Japan) and others all agreed to price fix. Samsung was also the one that confessed to the collusion to regulators and got many manufacturers fined heavily. The point is, you would need a large-scale collusion among ALL major memory manufacturers to price-fix in this industry. Just 2 manufacturers agreeing to price fix wouldn't have done anything.
Anyway, history shows that Samsung and other memory manufacturers made the right move, as after the bitcoin bubble collapsed in 2018, memory prices declined to historically low levels until the COVID lockdowns, indicating that there was no collusion and price spikes during those years was a natural result of high demand rather than market manipulation.
To anyone reading this, I would avoid listening to Takeshima. A lot of these Japanese right-wingers make their posts sound credible by posting false information and hoping that no one would look into them. Honestly, they're getting pretty aggravating, as they derail conversations into a pro-Japan, anti-Korea slant. At least 4chan keeps their racism and garbage contained in /pol/. These Japanese right-wing netizens try to make the Japan-Korea feud everywhere, even in completely irrelevant places like this thread. Just look at how he brought in Samsung into this discussion.
I noticed a lot of Japanese netizens have a particular problem with Samsung, mainly because Samsung dominated many of the industries Japan used to dominate such as semiconductor manufacturing, display manufacturing, etc. I think it has to do with superiority complex - Japanese people refuse to believe that Koreans (Samsung) could have defeated them fairly, so they concoct fantastical tales about Samsung's corruption to explain why they lost. Samsung may be corrupt (Bribes, price-fixing, etc), but that isn't why they lead high-level manufacturing. Their technology is just that much better than their competitors, which is why Apple uses Samsung OLED and not J-Display/SHARP OLED. BOE stole Samsung's display tech and is still having problems with yields. The only other manufacturer that seems capable is LG, another Korean company.
Another delusional J-netizen claimed that the Korean government controlled the world's media, and that's why K-pop was taking off, nevermind the fact that Japan's former Prime Minister funded and spearheaded the "Cool Japan" program. Their "blame Koreans/Samsung for our plight" sounds a lot like the alt-right people blaming Jews for running the bank and media.
Then you have the Japanophiles on a certain prominent, racist site who claim that Koreans and Jews are working together to enslave the entire world.
The mental gymnastics some people go through to explain their failures is honestly pretty laughable.
I also think this arrogance may cause them to lose in other industries such as the automobile market. I noticed that Takeshima also has an unusual hatred of Tesla and Elon Musk, accusing them of building low quality cars. The Toyota CEO also seems to have a dismissive attitude towards Tesla. There is a reason Tesla has the highest customer satisfaction rate, is rated #1 in safety by the NHTSA and commands 80% of the BEV market in the US and a commanding market-share in other markets. Rather than thinking that Japan is the best at everything, they should learn why they fell behind in semiconductors and are about to lose the auto market.
Its funny to notice, Japanese loves Apple devices, like Macrumors has titled , its a total domination: half of market
In the other hands, they boycott Xbox consoles and most of american products, Japan is known for being self nationalist/patriotic
Why Apple succeed?
China is the counter example: Apple need to share market with chinese competitors
Oppo, Xiaomi, Huawei, Vivo
Tesla also isn't doing well in Japan but is doing amazing in China and Korea. 40% EV revenue in China and around 70-80% BEV marketshare in Korea. I'm unsure if Tesla will be able to take a stronghold in Japan, as the auto industry is very large in Japan and is Japan's #1 export. It will take a long time for them to concede that Americans make better cars than Toyota. It will also do a lot of damage to their economy.
Xbox's situation is understandable, as Microsoft shot themselves in the foot last gen with the eSRAM disaster and restrictive DRM policies. SONY made a gamble that Samsung could double GDDR5 density on time and it paid off. Had Samsung not pulled through, the PS4 could've been a 4GB RAM machine and the market may have ignored the XBONE's DRM policies for its superior power.
Xbox may never regain the marketshare they had during the 360 generation unless SONY seriously screws up.
