SYDNEY: Taking a look back at the week’s news across the Android world, this week’s Android Circuit highlights a number of stories including the lack of Lollipop 5.0 updates, Samsung’s falling profits and how the company is damaging the Galaxy S6 before it is launched, the S6 fights the S Edge, one billion Android devices shipped in 2014, the LG G2 takes on the iPhone 6, reviewing the Sony SmartWatch 3, and HTC hands a camera to a Koala bear.
Android Circuit is here to remind you of a few of the many things that have happened around Android over the last seven days (and you can read the weekly Apple news digest here).
Counting Your Lollipops Before They Download
Following on from my editorial that ‘Nobody is using Android 5.0 Lollipop‘ at the start of January, firmware updates and over-the-air installations for the latest version of Android are starting to appear. It’s getting close to the ‘ninety day window’ following Google’s release of Android 5.0 Lollipop, but a number of manufacturers are set to meet that challenge.
To highlight a few, OnePlus has announced the OxygenOS Android Rom (based on 5.0), European users of the HTC One M8 can download 5.o now, UK editions of the Samsung Galaxy S5 should be seeing the new version, and LG G3 users on Vodafone UK have seen the code.
These rollouts mean manufacturers can say they met the ninety day deadline, but it’s going to take a much more widespread release over multiple handsets, carriers, and continents, before we can honestly say that Lollipop has really arrived.
Samsung Profits In Perilous Year-On-Year Decline
Moving to Samsung, and the Q1 2015 earnings report is sobering reading. Overall profits are down 27%. Smartphone profits are down by 64%. And Samsung’s entire smartphone line-up was likely outsold by Apple’s iPhone. Forbes’ Parmy Olsen:
Samsung’s operating margin fell by 400 basis points to 10% from last year. while its EBITDA margin slid to 18% in the fourth quarter from 21% last year. Operating profits at Samsung’s mobile division, which made up half the company’s sales in 2014, dropped from $5 billion to $1.8 billion in the fourth quarter, year-on-year.
Samsung still has its semiconductor business to fall back on (overall sales rose by 6%, memory sales by 24%), but it’s going to need to do some radical thinking to reclaim its moniker as the number one smartphone manufacturer.
Galaxy S6 To Be Challenged At Launch By Galaxy S Edge
Bad puns aside, it appears that Samsung will be announcing two handsets at MWC in March. The first will be the Samsung Galaxy S6, the second could be an S6 variant with the curved screen and digital spine seen in the Galaxy Note Edge. Gordon Kelly introduces the Galaxy S Edge:
Vodafone Netherlands is the carrier likely to be on the end of a furious Samsung phone call after its site accidentally published a product page for the ‘Samsung Galaxy S6’ and, more interestingly, left visible code for a mysterious ‘Samsung Galaxy S Edge’…Expected to be based on the Galaxy Note Edge released late last year, it would mean the phone sports a touchscreen display along its right edge. This works independently of the main screen providing shortcuts, widgets and controls allowing the main screen to be completely filled by games or video without wasting space.
The Galaxy S Edge could be one of Samsung’s most revolutionary handsets… if it can find the courage to actually commit to it one hundred percent, rather than hedge its bets by making it an appendix to the Galaxy S6 – a strategy that weakens both the S Edge and the S6.
Can Samsung Be Saved From Itself?
Why announce two handsets? I think it is a question of courage. Samsung has been reliant on past success and an iterative update cycle for many years now. I argued earlier in the week that Samsung has created its own cloud of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. That cloud is killing the chances of the Galaxy relaunch to have a huge impact:
Samsung were scared to let the ‘Edge’ concept stand alone as a key differentiator. The old and venerable design of the Note 4 was used as a safety net for the new concept. The old design on the Note 4 would go on sale so as not to scare the existing customer base… Now we hear that Samsung is going to do the same split concept with the Galaxy S6. There’s going to be ‘an all-singing all-dancing Galaxy S6′, and ‘here’s something better, the Galaxy S Edge’.
If Samsung was brave, it would commit one hundred percent, and the Galaxy S Edge would be the only model of the S6 available. The Galaxy S6 would be the Galaxy S Edge and everyone would get the digital spine. As it is, Samsung’s make or break handset is going to have to share the stage with a concept device that will attract more attention and coverage.
You can’t play safe and be innovative in the same presentation. 2014 was the year the South Korean company played safe, and it took a huge financial hit. So, 2015, safe or innovative – which is it to be, Samsung?