Samsung is the new Sony... and the new Nokia too.

According to the Financial Times yesterday, not only is Samsung moving ahead of Nokia in the mobile phone market, but the fact that they're Korean means they're likely to stay ahead. It is extremely unusual to read positive coverage of Korea in the British media, so it's great to see an article like this. (Although Korea wasn't in south-east Asia the last time I checked...)

Nokia and the insistent ringing of competition
By John Gapper
Financial Times (UK); Apr 20, 2004

[...]Samsung's camera phones, with twisting flip-up screens that allow users to take, send and display photos quickly and easily, are hot; Nokia's are not.

Samsung's market capitalisation exceeded that of Nokia last week as this fact became evident in the companies' first-quarter results. Even more galling is the transfer of something intangible, yet highly valuable: market leadership. The high end of the market - phones that retail for $300 or more in the US - is no longer Nokia's. Samsung makes the expensive camera phone that a young consumer wants to brandish.

Nokia seems to realise how potentially serious is its predicament, even if its initial response - six of its 40 planned new models are clamshell-shaped - is a bit scatter-gun. But two obstacles stand in the way of its regaining authority. One (product design) should be soluble, given the company's heritage. The other (that Samsung is South Korean) will be harder to tackle, as other western companies are likely to find as well.
[...]
There is no obvious reason Nokia, like Nike, should not regain its poise in design. But Samsung has another advantage, which is more difficult for any European rival to counter: the willingness of young South Koreans to pay high prices for new electronic devices. In terms of access to broadband and telecommunications infrastructure, Samsung happens to be sitting in one of the world's most wired - and wireless - markets.

Nokia had a similar advantage with mobile voice telephony in Finland in the 1990s and exploited it to establish a strong presence round the world, including in Asia. But Europe has trailed Asia in high-speed mobile services. South Korea has more than 5m subscribers to third-generation services. That has helped Samsung to develop better designs for camera handsets at home before applying the lessons in Europe and the US.
[...]
Of course, Japanese companies including Sony and Toyota have done that for several decades, blending design and technology in ways unmatched by western companies. But countries such as South Korea have a demographic advantage over Japan and Europe - a plentiful supply of young people. As south-east Asian economies develop, those consumers will become increasingly valuable.
[...]
Western companies often talk of Asia as a vast market waiting to be tapped, but Samsung has shown that it can bite back. Every western business executive visiting the continent probably experiences that fear: they're hot and we're not.