Apple Inc. (AAPL), Google Inc (GOOG), and Is Samsung About to Get Samsunged?

Android loyalty isn’t Samsung loyalty
Android consumers have shown their fickleness before. It seems like just yesterday that HTC was the Android champion, but that was 2010. Even for users loyal to the platform, they’re normally not loyal to the OEM brand. It’s quite conceivable that another Android vendor could supplant Samsung in exactly the same way that Samsung displaced HTC.

Source: IDC.

Maybe it won’t be LG; maybe it’ll be Chinese vendors like ZTE or Huawei, both of which showed up on the global top-five radar last year. This may be more likely, since LG still doesn’t rank in the top five, although it ranks No. 5 in the U.S. with 6.8% of domesticsmartphone subscribers.

The whole reason Samsung has been trying to undermine Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android lately in the first place is in an effort to differentiate itself and fend off commoditization, which reduces the chances that fellow Android enlistees will steal its crown. If any vendor is going to topple Samsung, chances are it’ll be another Android OEM. So long as it all contributes to Android ubiquity, don’t expect much preference out of Big G as to who wins. In fact, the search giant already isn’t particularly comfortable with Samsung’s dominance anyway.

Is Samsung about to get Samsunged?

The article Is Samsung About to Get Samsunged? originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Evan Niu, CFA.

Fool contributor Evan Niu, CFA, owns shares of Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Apple and Google. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple and Google.

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