Kevin Bostic
On the evening that his company unveiled the follow-up to its best-selling Android smartphone, Samsung's new CEO spoke some harsh truths about the prospects of another of Samsung's software partners, saying demand for Microsoft products in the mobile sector is "lackluster."
J.K. Shin, Samsung's 57-year-old CEO, made the remarks in the course of an interview with The Wall Street Journal. Shin's comments on Windows came as he discussed the company's relationship to Android, the Google operating system that powers Samsung's Galaxy S 4 handset.
"Smartphones and tablets based on Microsoft's Windows operating system aren't selling very well," Shin said. "There is a preference in the market for Android. In Europe, we're also seeing lackluster demand for Windows-based products."
Shin's remarks, in the context of the interview, seem to preclude the possibility that the South Korean conglomerate may begin working more closely with Microsoft on Windows devices. Samsung makes a number of Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 devices, as well as tablets running ARM-based Windows RT. Recent reports, though, have Samsung discontinuing sales of its Windows RT devices in Germany; this after confirming in January that it would not launch Windows RT devices in the United States.
Shin's remarks likely will not gain him any friends within Microsoft, which has been struggling since a weak Windows 8 launch to generate buzz around its latest operating system. The company's most recent quarterly results show the difficulty of Microsoft's situation. The PCs Microsoft's manufacturing partners make simply are not selling, as customers increasingly opt for smartphones and tablets instead.
Microsoft has begun offering price breaks on Windows and Office offerings in an effort to grow market share. Projections for the tablet market, though, see Windows devices only reaching about 10 percent share over the next 4 years.
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45 Comments
Wow...it reminds me of the story told to James Bond by Silva in Skyfall...you put all the rats in a barrel and starve them...soon they begin each other until there are only 2 left. You turn those 2 loose but now, they only eat other rats...
Well put.
How does this correlate with the claims that people only buy Samsung phones because they are Samsungs, and not because they run Android? Why aren't the Samsung WP8 phones selling?
Dirty Samsung. It is a kind of monopoly in Silicon chips. So, it makes these kind of cheap comments. Junkk.
When I think about the Surface I always go back to the unveiling of the device when the thing Froze and it had to be switched to another one. That was so sad and yet almost expected since it was a Microsoft device. Microsoft is reaping what it sowed. They made Vista and gave it to the public. Windows 7 was better but it still had the inherent flaws of the Windows OS. Windows 8 is confusing to some people. When competing brands of cell phones run better than a desktop computer running Windows, expect defections. People see more options and are realizing that there are better things out there than Windows. Windows is surviving only because so many people just haven't tried anything else. The iPad would put away Windows forever if it just had a good file system and an SD card reader. It would become a computer replacement and Microsoft would have to become a gaming device maker instead of a computer manufacturer. Windows would fade away quickly as the iPads and Macs would take over.