Samsung's White Flag

Event: With its smartphone business prospects looking darker by the day, Samsung is now turning to the Internet of things for growth.  

Samsung's battle with Apple in the high-end consumer tech space is likely over.  This past February I wrote a piece titled, "Samsung's Crisis of Design 2.0" referencing Samsung's utter lack of direction and focus with half-baked smartwatch ideas and subpar smartphone industrial design. The first "crisis" occurred when Samsung was unsure how to compete with the iPhone's user experience back in 2010. Now in an effort to find growth Samsung is focused on the Internet of things despite software being the company's weak point. Engineers are being shuffled around,  management tension is building, and the company is still trying to find something that will stick against the wall.  Two months ago Tim Cook was on Charlie Rose and when the question about Apple's competitors came up, Tim Cook quickly responded "Google" and then mentioned how Google enables other hardware companies, like Samsung.  The message was clear: Samsung was already placed in Apple's irrelevant bucket.  I suspect Samsung will give the low-end smartwatch space another try once the Apple Watch is released, but with design and software being Samsung's weak points, my expectations are set pretty low.