Samsung: King of Android

It takes a lot to drag me away from sitting in front of the TV, watching sport on a Sunday afternoon. And, I’m guessing, that is the case for many people, although the more interesting among you may substitute, ‘going for a bike ride’, ‘taking a stroll’ or ‘washing the car’ for my own football-, rugby- and cricketrelated gogglebox tendencies.

This particular Sunday was different. The sabbath found me and millions more tuning into live webcasts of smartphone launches. I was watching because it is my job to do so, but the numbers of viewers to the live streams and live blogs on the PC Advisor website tell me just how popular were the HTC One M9 and Samsung Galaxy S6 launches. Both trended worldwide on Twitter, which is more than can be said for West Ham vs Crystal Palace.

This is not a new phenomenon. Starting with Apple’s 2007 iPhone launch, and spreading outside the Apple world with the Galaxy S III unveiling, smartphone events have become box office. But not all smartphones are made equal. And nor is the mindshare each commands.

The iPhone remains top of the shop. Each new Apple phone melts web servers the world over. Face facts, Android fans – people care more about iPhones than they do any Android handset.

But Samsung’s Galaxy phones are a close-run second. The Galaxy S2 was the first Android we saw that really gripped the imaginations of a large audience of smartphone fans, and the Galaxy S III launch was the first time that we saw huge traffic for a non-Apple phone launch.

It continues. Despite the plaudits showered upon the new HTC One M9 (see page 34), it was Samsung’s event that attracted a huge audience. And it continued throughout MWC – two of the top five stories on PCAdvisor.co.uk were about the Galaxy S6. And this is a website with more than one million pieces of content, on which hundreds of stories are published every day.

We knew this would be the case, of course. When, in advance of MWC, we asked readers of PC Advisor: “What product are you most looking forward to hearing about at MWC 2015?” The Galaxy S6 Edge was top with 19 percent of the votes, and the Galaxy S6 second with 13 percent. In a list of 12 products, a third of respondents (more than 1,000 people) chose products with ‘Samsung Galaxy S6’ in the name. Of the other contenders only the HTC One M9 with 17 percent of the vote, and the nonexistent Sony Xperia Z4 (13 percent) were chosen by more than 10 percent of voters.

Fast forward beyond the launches and the latest results stand out even more. The current PC Advisor poll is still in field, and has 3,012 respondents. But of those people 44 percent are most interested in either the Galaxy S6 or the Galaxy S6 Edge. Nothing else has more than the HTC One M9’s 17 percent.

This doesn’t say anything fundamental about how good, bad or indifferent are these products. But the fact remains that outside of the cult of Apple, Samsung remains the big beast about which people care the most. And given Apple’s eminently sensible absence from MWC, this means that Samsung rules MWC with ease.

Outside of the cult of Apple, Samsung remains the big beast about which people care

the most