Samsung Surrenders To Apple As Note 7 Nightmare Gifts Victory To iPhone 7

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Samsung’s official cancellation of the Galaxy Note 7 promises to bring it weeks of bad press, millions of returns to process, and a huge financial cost to recall and dispose of the incendiary phablets. It also hands Apple a golden opportunity to cement its reputation as the leading smartphone manufacturer of
2016 with the recently launched iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.
The cancellation of the Note 7 comes after a series of battery fires in the South Korean company’s latest phablet. Although a global exchange program took place, the replaced units continued to overheat and explode. The news of the Note 7’s retail death is both inevitable and punishing for Samsung.

Its best hope is to ride out the PR storm that will envelope it over the next few weeks, work hard on the Galaxy S8 (expected to launch in four months time), and see if it was ’Note’, ‘Galaxy’, or ’Samsung’ that has taken the most reputational damage. That’s a question that may not be answered until the results are in from the second calendar quarter in 2017.
As Samsung’s hopes of smartphone dominance in 2016 literally burns down, Apple is not only ready to sweep in and save the consumer with the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, it has been putting resources in place to quietly capture disappointed Note 7 users since before the launch of the new handsets.

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 (Image: Samsung Press)

It’s unlikely that Apple will make a direct play for Galaxy Note 7 users (no doubt Cupertino’s staff would see that as ‘punching down’) but it can make sure that Apple is ready and waiting to welcome more users from the Android ecosystem.

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Apple already has a suite of tools to import data from an Android device and move it onto an iOS enabled device. The software process is as smooth as Apple can make it. If people decide to make the jump, Apple is holding up a personal parachute in its Move to iOS app. It’s a popular route as well. Last year Cook noted that thirty percent of iPhone buyers were coming from Android devices. Over the entire iPhone range, three in ten devices sold were conversions from Google’s alternative.

Apple iPhone 7 (image: Ewan Spence)

While there may be no direct marketing, I’ve no doubt that Apple will seek to maximise this four-month window where its chief rival has no new device to offer high-end users (the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge were announced in February 2016, almost nine months ago). Apple increased its component orders by ten percent at the start of September, just as the issues with the Note 7 were becoming critical. That’s a very interesting co-incidence.

While other Android manufacturers (notably Google and Huawei) will be hoping to capture some of the millions of Note users looking for an alternate device, analysts are suggesting that Apple could pick up an additional eight million device sales in 2016.
If those numbers are accurate, then it will lift iPhone sales for 2016 up to a level roughly equal to 2015’s sales. That would mean the slide in new iPhone sales that started in Q1 2016 would be reversed, the momentum on innovation and sales would return to Cupertino, and Tim Cook could lead Apple into the tenth-anniversary year of the iPhone with a significant victory over its rivals.
Well played, Samsung.

Ewan Spence ,  

Contributor

source - http://www.forbes.com

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