Samsung in talks to supply garda phones
After helping Nokia weather a storm, Conor Pierce is steering a new course with the Korean tech giant, writes Michael Cogley
SAMSUNG Electronics has entered into discussions with An Garda Siochana to supply the entire force with new handsets which will double as their personal computers.
The devices operate on a secure system known as “DeX”, which transforms a smartphone into a powerful desktop computer. Samsung is hoping to reach a similar agreement with the gardai to its arrangement with the UK Home Office where more than half of the police force only use Samsung devices.
In an interview with the Sunday Independent, Samsung’s recently-appointed vice president for the UK and Ireland, Conor Pierce, said: “I think we can be confident that we have the best security, military grade. With that confidence we are now engaged with the gardai and other emergency services in Ireland to try and roll that out.” Negotiations with the gardai and Samsung remain at an “early stage”.
Pierce also said that he is in talks with the country’s major networks to bring 4G technology to smartwatches, a service that is available to customers in the UK and the US.
The Dublin native said that the service will arrive in Ireland “within the year”. Samsung employs 55 people at its head office in south county Dublin with further hires expected this year.
WHEN Conor Pierce was selling insurance to sceptical primary school teachers along the west coast of Ireland, the idea of a utopian world powered by high-speed data and 5G handsets must have been very far from his mind. Neither could he have dreamed back then that one day he would head up a major territory for one of the world’s biggest companies.
Yet here he is looking after Ireland and the UK for Samsung Electronics and is now one of the most senior Irish figures in the smartphone industry. The Shankill, Co Dublin native — recently appointed as Samsung vice president — has led a fascinating career to date that included everything from selling socks across Europe to plugging holes at the sinking Finnish giant that was Nokia.
Pierce confessed to being “attracted to darkness” and that he excelled in situations where businesses needed to be turned around. He pointed to his time as head of Nokia in the UK and Ireland as the “most exciting” period of his career.
“I was shocked to be honest. I was shocked that Nokia got to the state that it was in, on its knees, losing huge market share,” the tech executive said.
“The fact that such a powerful, loved brand, could deteriorate so quickly really upset me because we were really emotionally involved in that.”
Having spent years building up the Nokia brand across North Africa he headed closer to home in 2011 only to be “horrified” by a decision made by his superiors. Nokia was going to dump its Symbian operating system for Windows Phone, a platform that was meant to go toe-to-toe with Apple’s iOS system and Google’s Android but instead went down as one of the greatest tech flops in recent years.
“There were 2,500 people working in Nokia in the UK, and about 1,800 of those were Symbian engineers, which we outsourced to Accenture at the time. I had to dismantle the past and rebuild a business from scratch,” he said.
“I remember interviewing people and trying to motivate them to come to Nokia. I remember Nokia wasn’t a place people wanted to go to because it was falling apart at the time It was like setting up a startup company in a multi-billion dollar brand. At the end of those four or five years we went from around 2,500 people to around 250 people. After 13 consultations, it was horrific. The amount of pressure to rebuild Windows Phone from Microsoft and Nokia was phenomenal and we were the underdogs.”
Nokia, boasting the Windows Phone operating system, eventually got itself up to 13pc market share before Bill Gates’s colossus bought the Finnish company outright and closed its phone business down. It was at that point that Pierce left for Samsung.
He has a system for when he enters a business that needs saving. Assess the situation, the talent on board, the market, but, he says, most importantly, set “some form of direction”.
“Imagine being in a tanker that’s floundering in a massive storm and you don’t see a horizon but you see a glimmer of hope so you start aiming that so at least the team know that we’re moving that way,” he says.
While such tactics may have been necessary in Ericsson and Nokia, it’s hard to imagine that those skills will be needed at Samsung in the near future. Samsung is the market leader here in terms of volume, and it claims to be nabbing up to 1,900 Apple users a month in the premium smartphone category.
Despite this, one of the company’s main categories, the smartphone, is flatlining. In Samsung’s defence they’re hardly the only ones to be suffering from what seems to be an over-saturation of a market that has struggled for real innovation in recent years.
“At this stage, yes the Irish market and Western European markets are saturated. There’s 4.9 million people living in Ireland and there’s just about five million mobile connections so there’s more mobile connections than there are people,” Pierce said.
“The market is definitely saturated and has been for some time. The decade of growth that we’ve all enjoyed and seen is flatlining for a variety of reasons,” he said. “There is an apathy among consumers ‘what I have may be good enough’, therefore they’re holding onto their devices longer.”
The UCD graduate admitted that the affinity many had with the two-year contractual upgrade system has faded while the second-hand smartphone market has excelled. That said the introduction of 5G, a mobile network that could be up to 50 times faster than 4G, has given optimism for substantial growth in the future.
“5G is beginning to land this year — 5G is going to be a major catalyst for growth in our sector, and also it’s going to change people’s lives which is exciting,” he said.
“It will change the way we live, the way we work, the way we communicate, when it becomes ubiquitous. It’s going to take a long time, it will take longer for 5G to land than it did for 4G and remember only 50pc of the mobile subscriptions in Ireland are 4G, many, many years after 4G has launched.”
Transport is one area that could be revolutionised by 5G’s ability to guide autonomous cars.
“Imagine a car travelling at 70 miles an hour,” he said. “It will take two metres for it to respond to the data it receives. With 5G it will be 50 times faster, so therefore safety, security and response time will be phenomenal. It will allow real-time autonomous driving.”
But the rolling out of 5G has not been without controversy. For instance, the decision by the US government to arrest an executive from Chinese manufacturer Huawei and encouraging other countries not to use their 5G hardware.
That has not stopped Huawei continuing to become a commercial thorn in the side of Apple and Samsung, producing a number of high-end phones that have been received exceptionally well. Last year, the company reported a 50pc increase in revenue in its consumer business up to $52bn.
Despite the headaches it may be causing him, Pierce insists that he likes competition and says it’s healthy for the industry.
“The European market is very complicated, it’s very fragmented. Luckily Ireland and the UK is a very premium market. The majority of the market is premium and when I say premium I mean €600 and above. Maybe 70pc or more is premium. It’s very difficult to compete in that space unless you have an established brand,” he said.
“Regardless of your portfolio, Irish consumers are very brand-sensitive. It has been incredibly tough for our Chinese competitors to come in and carve out a relevant space. That’s certainly something for us to watch out for.”
Like most tech multinationals Samsung is very well diversified. While it may be best known for its impressive array of televisions and Galaxy smartphones and tablets, the company is also in the fridge, washing machine, and vacuum-cleaner businesses.
One such category that has proven popular among Irish users is the smartwatch. While the Galaxy Watch and the Apple Watch and others are becoming more and more synonymous with Irish life, one feature remains out of reach for the early adopters. In the UK and the US, watch users can leave their phone behind and remain connected through LTE (Long Term Evolution) on their watch — a key feature for any smartwatch user.
Pierce, who splits his time between Dublin and London, is confident that the service will hit Irish shores this year.
“It’s quite a big project to integrate. There are several solutions you can use. I’m speaking from experience in the UK and we’re working with our partners here and we’re very keen to do so because it has been very successful,” he said.
“One of the reasons why the Galaxy Watch is so successful in the UK is because we have LTE. We’re very keen to launch it in Ireland this year.
“We need to work with our operators. They have been very open to it, they absolutely understand the need for it and it’s another subscription for them.”
The introduction of LTE will mean that consumers will be able to keep the same number across multiple devices but will add to their monthly tariff, said Pierce. This means someone using a smartphone, tablet, and smartwatch, can have them all synced to the same number under the same bill.
And Ireland could become an even more interesting market for Samsung in other ways too. Much has been made of the difficulties of gardai on the beat having to spend vast amounts of time reporting on their job rather than actually doing it.
In what Pierce says is a testament to the security of their devices, he’s just agreed a deal to wire up the UK’s emergency services with Samsung devices and has now set his sights on Ireland.
“Samsung was the sole manufacturer chosen by the UK Home Office to supply hardware to their emergency services network, that says a lot,” he said. “I think we can be confident that we have the best security — military grade. More than half of the UK police force are only using Samsung devices. With that confidence we are now engaged with the gardai and other emergency services in Ireland to try and roll that out.”
There were few hints in Pierce’s early career that he would ultimately end up selling high tech gadgetry to law enforcement.
One of his first jobs was in the family hosiery business — Glenross — based in Poppintree in North Dublin. A stint running his own stall at the Blackrock market followed during college before spending two-and-a-half years on various travels around the world.
He visited India, Nepal, Australia, various Pacific Islands and the US before finding himself back in Ireland working for an insurance company, Woodchester Brokers, selling salary protection schemes to primary school teachers during their break time.
“I had all of the west of Ireland,” he said. “They didn’t want a yuppie from Dublin in a suit selling them insurance.”
He lasted a year but learned a lot. “I learned about trust, listening to people,” he said.
These days Pierce is focused on big-picture problems and selling the utopia of a world full of smart homes and autonomous vehicles.
But, in a tech industry facing any number of challenges, there is no doubt that the hard lessons he learned from selling insurance and socks will continue to stand to him.