Samsung – Who is the master now?

Samsung is moving to take control of Android

• Samsung’s latest participation in the open source community shows: a) how fragmented Android is and b) how Google could easily lose control of Android.
• Android is offered to the open source community on the basis of the Apache licence.
• This means that when the product is shipped, any modifications made to the source code have to be contributed back to the community.
• This is exactly what Samsung is doing in releasing its kernel for the Galaxy S4 to the community.
• However, Samsung did not release one kernel but three (GT-19500, GT-19505 and SGH-1337M).
• This is in indication that even within each model, where one would expect some consistency, there is enough variation to warrant a separate release.
• Add this to the very high level of non-Google compliant devices and the desire of every handset maker to differentiate, means to me that Android should no longer be counted as an ecosystem.
• In fact Android is really just an OS and it is the ecosystem that goes on top of that where the difference is made. 
• For example I forecast that there will be 873m Android devices in the hands of users by the end of 2013.
• However only around 260m of those will be Google compliant with the remainder being forked variants such as Android or Chinese versions.
• Hence, the Android ecosystem as Google refers to it is not 1bn users. It is more like 300m. The rest are other ecosystems.
• Fragmentation is alive and well in Android and the developers will soon have to start choosing which version to support.
• Samsung also ships just over 50% of all Android devices meaning that if developers ensure that their applications work on Samsung devices they have over half the market covered.
• Adding others will mean the same amount of work for a fraction of the reward.
• Hence I suspect that developers will begin following Samsung’s modifications to Android to maximise their addressable market.
• In time this will mean that Samsung will be in effective control of the platform.
• Eventually, I think Samsung will rip out all of the Google applications and hooks into its servers and replace them with its own.
• With the developers following its modifications to the source code, this will effectively become the official master code line, wresting control of it from Google.
• This is going to take some time to accomplish, but Samsung must do it if it wants to maintain its current level of profitability as hardware becomes more and more of a commodity.
• Hence while Samsung and Google exist in a reasonably harmonious state at the moment, this will change as Samsung feels the need to move into its patch.
• Please see here for more on the topic of Samsung vs. Google.