[The Editors' Verdict] Galaxy Must Abandon 'World 1st' to Survive

Abandoning the Visible 'World's First'
Emphasizing Invisible Technology Integration and Convenience

[Asia Economy Myung Jin-gyu, Content Manager] It seems the news that teenagers only prefer iPhones was quite painful. The fact that even in their home market, they are losing market share to iPhones must have felt like a crisis.

Samsung Electronics is gradually unveiling plans to enhance its competitiveness in the premium smartphone market. The management has ordered to increase brand value rather than market share. The mobile division has started developing its own application processor (AP). They also plan to take the initiative by early launching the ‘Galaxy S23’, equipped with a 200-megapixel camera and boasting the highest performance ever. Whenever Samsung Electronics boasts about technological achievements, the phrase ‘World 1st’?a family heirloom (傳家之寶)?is likely to be attached somewhere.

The 200-megapixel camera is certainly an impressive achievement but is closer to a developer’s idea. The resolution of one photo reaches about 17,000×12,000 pixels. The problem is that even if you take a photo with such high resolution, the screen on which you view the photo is a smartphone. Smartphone resolution is around 1440×2340. Even assuming you view the photo on a 4K TV, the resolution is only 3840×2160. There is no real need for a 200-megapixel camera. It is a typical over-spec. Photos taken with a 200-megapixel camera only take up more memory card space.

Apple insisted on a 12-megapixel camera up to the iPhone 13. It first equipped a 48-megapixel camera on the iPhone 14 Pro. This is because consumers mainly view photos on iPhones or iPads. Instead, Apple invested early in HEIC (High Efficiency Image File Format), a technology for compressing photo files. Apple adopted HEIC as the standard photo file format for the iPhone 11 in 2017 to solve the problem of increased photo file size. Competitors adopted external memory, so large capacity was not a big issue. Samsung Electronics only started supporting HEIC files three years later.

This difference has solidified the chase-and-pursuit relationship between the two companies. Samsung Electronics is particularly obsessed with ‘World 1st’ in visible areas. However, in invisible areas, it still only follows Apple. Apple introduced the voice assistant service ‘Siri’ in 2011. Samsung Electronics developed various services but only properly commercialized ‘Bixby’ in 2017. Although Samsung had been in the Bluetooth earphone business for a long time, Apple gained the upper hand by launching ‘AirPods’ in 2016. Samsung’s proper counterattack came in 2019 with the release of ‘Galaxy Buds’.

Apple’s designed ‘Bionic’ processors originally started with the ‘A4’ chipset developed in cooperation with semiconductor design company Intrinsity by Samsung Electronics. Apple acquired Intrinsity for 130 billion won in 2010 and began making chips directly from the ‘A5’. Now, Apple develops the ‘M series’ processors used even in MacBooks. Samsung Electronics has only now announced it will develop its own processors. The gap with Apple is 13 years. The term ‘super-gap’ that Samsung boasted about now seems meaningless.

Among the technologies, products, and services listed above, Apple has not attached the phrase ‘World 1st’ to any of them. Now Samsung Electronics must abandon the visible ‘World 1st’. Only then can Samsung Electronics survive.