Being No. 2 could be Samsung’s advantage
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Being No. 2 could be Samsung’s advantage
David Brancaccio: The big news about company profits has been spelled A-P-P-L-E for a good part of the week. But don’t forget Samsung, which reported record profits of its own today. Samsung makes a lot of things but its smartphones are doing especially well.
Marketplace’s Queena Kim reports.
Queena Kim: Everybody knows the iPhone, but can you name Samsung’s phones? There’s the Galaxy — and the Rugby, Focus, Infuse, Captivate and Indulge.
Carolina Milanesi: You’re probably look at a portfolio that goes between 10 and 15 products a year.
That’s Carolina Milanesi, a consumer products analyst at Gartner.
Milanesi: They have different price points, they have different designs and they segment the user base in a more granular way than Apple does.
And that appeals to carriers like AT&T and Verizon who are worried about being too dependent on the iPhone and in Apple’s grip. Carriers typically subsidize the cost of your cell phone. For many Samsung phones, that cost runs about $100 or $200. But for Apple, it’s lot higher.
Scott Sutherland is a telecom analyst with Wedbush.
Scott Sutherland: Apple gets about $600 per device and carriers sell those devices for about $200. So the larger subsidy also hits their bottom line.
I’m Queena Kim for Marketplace.
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