Glitzy Galaxy launch: it’s not about the phone

Surrounded by the glitz, the glamour and the sheer extravagance of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 launch at the Sydney Opera House last week I had to keep reminding myself that this was not an event of even minor historic importance, such as the launch of a new company or the opening of a major building: mobile phone models these days generally survive for two years at most before the being superseded by the next greatest thing.

Yes I know the S4 is impressive but with two major ecosystems - Android and Apple - dominating the market it’s all about the bells and whistles. And the S4 has plenty, impressive ones too. But of course this event wasn’t just about the S4. It marked the latest salvo in Samsung’s battle to dominate the smartphone and a few other consumer electronics markets. Apparently the launch event for Samsung’s Smart TV’s, just a week earlier at Sydney’s Star Casino, was an event on an equally spectacular scale.

Neither event was a one-off. Unlike Apple’s Big Bang approach - honed to perfection by the late Steve Jobs - of announcing every new product with just one big event in San Francisco, Samsung has gone for Rolling Thunder: the Sydney shindig was just one, the third I think, of 11 similar events being held around the world starting with New York in March. So, in the age of instant global news, very little of what was said about the S4 in Sydney was news to anyone who follows the industry closely.

The event was as much about a clash of titans that seems to have the global IT community transfixed - Apple v Samsung - as it was about a new mobile phone. It took place in the same week that Apple reported its first year-on-year quarterly profit fall in a decade, 18 percent, and Samsung a 42 percent growth in quarterly profits, year-on-year.

As a long-term observer of this industry I get an uncanny sense of history repeating itself. When the first iPhone appeared, it was truly innovative: its user interface was streets ahead of anything else on the market. Ditto with the iPad. It did not take long for rivals to catch up with, and arguably better the iPhone’s user interface and functionality, and undercut it on price. Ditto for the iPad, but even sooner.

Now go back to 1984 and the launch of the Apple Mac, a personal computer with a truly innovative user interface: a mouse and pull down menus instead of only a keyboard and command line interface. Microsoft was quick to follow with Windows - although for years it was a very poor substitute for the Mac OS (and arguably still is).

However while Apple - apart from a brief flirtation with openness - stuck doggedly to closed and tightly integrated hardware and OS anybody could build a machine to run the Microsoft OS. The result: global domination for the ‘Wintel’ ecosystem and a near death experience for Apple.

Of course, many things are different this time around, but a very big difference is that a lot of the innovation and competitive differentiation is not just in software, it’s in hardware and in the integration of the user interface with the hardware.

For example, take a few of the new features of the S4. A gesture sensor recognises the user’s hand movements using an infrared sensor. An infrared sensor also detects when the phone and user are in close proximity and the touch screen is ‘glove friendly’: you can control the phone even when wearing gloves (or if you are in the throes of kneading pastry) without actually touching the screen.

Samsung and its compatriot competitor, LG, both manufacture many electronics devices other than smartphone and LG’s claim at the recent launch of the Optimus would likely apply equally to Samsung. LG said that its ownership of key input technologies, such as displays, enabled it to gain access to important innovations faster than they could be obtained from third party suppliers. In the frantic race to come out with the latest, greatest, smallest, lightest and longest-battery-life smartphone, every little helps.

Apple has got to where it is today through a succession of world leading innovations, and an integrated ecosystem that spans desktop and laptop computers, MP3 players, online music and video, phones and tablets. This enables it to create a retail experience in its stores that no other vendor can match.

Samsung is moving in this direction. One announcement at the Opera House bash that was very much local news was Samsung WatchON. It comprises a number of offerings: The TV discovery service ”turns the Galaxy S4 into a next generation TV remote control. All 34 Australian free-to-air TV channels are integrated enabling users to browse what's on TV, see program recommendations from friends via social networks, search for favourite shows and set programme reminders.”

The second service, TV Discovery, offers a choice of video-on-demand services from the major Hollywood studios, local content partners such as Quickflix and catch-up TV services. Also, the Samsung Smart View application available from early May will enable users to clone what they're watching on TV onto the Galaxy S4.

It’s possible that Apple will be able to maintain its market position by continuing its innovation leadership, but the pace of technology evolution is quickening and the advantage gained by each successive innovation is likely to be lost soon than from those that preceded it.

This article first appeared on iTWire, Australia's leading independent IT&T news and information source.