Despite higher volumes of smartphone brands, China and India still trail South Korea
I have just looked up the list of mobile phone makers per country, and found a powerful oddity!
The country with one of the least number of phone brands, namely just four, boasts of the most popular phone brand in the world. And that is South Korea. Yes, Samsung, the Global smartphone Brand is South Korean based.
Ideally however, if the popularity of smartphones namely, the number of brands a given country releases, were to depend on volume, then China, India and the United States would respectively be leading the Global smartphone market.
You immediately appreciate this oddity when you consider the performance of Samsung against that of the brands from countries with the highest number of Brands.
For instance, India with over a dozen smartphone brands has the second highest number of phone brands, but none of them is listed in the top 3 brands.
China too, despite loading the smartphone market with nearly 30 smartphone brands only manages to achieve a distant third position. Yes, Huawei based in China is listed behind UK’s apple, itself lagging behind Samsung.
The fundamental questions for technologists include: What is the role of ‘volume’ in making a given technology popular? What makes a smartphone brand popular?
Is it the quality of the phone? And if so, does emphasizing volume as does India and China add to quality or does it in fact affect it.
Because yes, South Korea’s success with Samsung, is a classic deviation from trying to use volume such as India and China.