Samsung has the low-cost smartphone market locked down. It's the only Android OEM to reach the top 10 list of best-selling smartphones, all thanks to low-cost Galaxy A devices. In terms of high-end phones, Samsung leads the Android smartphone segment, yet Apple still has better traction than all other OEMs, especially in western markets, where the company has a grip on the Gen Z.
A recent study show that more and more Gen Z customers, that is, people born between ~1995 and 2010, prefer iPhones over Android phones. Apple is steadily growing its iPhone userbase, while Android is losing ground, particularly in western markets and the high-end/premium price bracket.
37% of iPhone users in the USA are Gen Z, while Samsung only has 10% of Gen Z customers on its side of the fence. Meanwhile, 70% of so-called zoomers in the USA say they'll never use an Android phone (via Digital Information World). And herein might lie the problem for Samsung as well as Google.
Is Samsung losing to Apple? Or is Android losing to iOS?
Samsung's biggest enemy in its quest to sell more high-end phones in western markets might not be its hardware or Apple's competitive products but Android OS itself. No other Android smartphone manufacturer realistically competes with Samsung, yet the company is losing ground to Apple in the eyes of the zoomer generation.
Interestingly though, Gen Z users don't seem to dislike Samsung as much as they dislike Android. Granted, many young customers seemingly flock to iOS because of social pressures driven artificially by things such as the green-blue chat bubble segregation spearheaded by iMessage, or by AirDrop remaining exclusive to Apple devices. But these social pressures aside, zoomers seem more reluctant toward Android itself than Samsung's hardware.
Sadly for Google – and now Samsung – Android OS doesn't have the best reputation among Gen Z customers. Over the last decade, it seems as though the Android brand may have been tarnished in part by cheap, low-quality phones developed by OEMs in China and by the custom Android launchers they use, which are often buggy, unstable, and don't benefit from great support and reliable firmware update roadmaps.
In addition, Google doesn't have the strongest pull on Gen Z. It's not a brand whose reputation is growing among zoomers, 40% of which prefer searching the web using social platforms instead of the Google search engine. Google just isn't cool among Gen Z smartphone users, and the company isn't getting any better in this regard.
All in all, Google's reputation isn't helping Android, and in turn, it might be gradually eating away at Samsung's smartphone business across the premium price range in western markets.
Can Samsung and Google do anything to win back the hearts of zoomers?
Assuming that Samsung and Google even care about Apple's increasing influence over Gen Z customers, they don't seem to have a solution yet, or at least, not one that is paying off as of now.
Idealistically, one possible solution could be for Samsung to distance itself from the chipped reputation of Android and develop its own mobile OS with innovative features and the highest-possible security standards. One designed to compete with iOS on every possible level, from app support to capabilities and the cool/social factor.
Realistically, Samsung developing its own mobile OS to combat iOS is likely unattainable without spending massive resources and taking very high risks. Creating a mobile OS from the ground up in this day and age is extremely risky and time-consuming. Not to mention that Samsung would need great partners and app developers to jump on board the project to ensure the platform's success. And needless to say, if we view the Galaxy Store as a pilot leading to that, the future doesn't look very promising.
More realistically, if Samsung and Google want to combat Apple in the Gen Z market space, they may have to pull their resources together and collaborate more closely than ever, all the while paying less attention to the needs of smaller Android OEMs that don't have a chance at competing with Apple anyway.
Perhaps the best way to go about this is for both Samsung and Google to rebrand in a big way. Create a new mobile OS together — or a very ambitious fork of Android — boasting great and attractive services and features that would remain exclusive to Samsung while leaving the traditional Android OS and AOSP behind for other, smaller OEMs to toy with. Call this new OS something else that's not “Android,” and make it a more integral part of the Samsung experience.
Maybe the Pixel phones would have to go away for this to happen, but maybe that's a risk Google should be willing to take under the right conditions. And perhaps Samsung Group's other affiliates would lose a few clients from China in the process. But hopefully, in exchange, they'd gain a client with a stronger pull on the market, i.e., Samsung Electronics itself.
In the end, Samsung is the only real partner Google has in the smartphone world
Samsung's One UI is arguably the best implementation of Android OS, and in my opinion, it's the only one that matters and has a chance in front of the Gen Z audience. As such, the Korean tech giant should influence the direction in which this new OS co-developed with Google would go. Because, compared to Google, Samsung has a better chance of creating a hardware ecosystem through smartphones, TVs, and PCs, and it should have a big say in how this new OS would work to ensure cross-device capabilities similar to iOS.
For example, Samsung's fantastic Quick Share enables seamless file transfer between Galaxy mobile phones running Android and Windows Galaxy laptops. Other Android manufacturers don't come close to offering anything like this out of the box. And Google has yet to create close-enough ties with Microsoft to make Android and Windows as powerful of a combination as iOS and MacOS.
Whatever the solution is, Android and the Android Open Source Project don't seem to be the answer to winning Gen Z customers in the current landscape and defeating Apple. Customers seem to value security and a consistent experience across device types and device generations rather than having the option of picking between countless Android phones, neither of which excels or seems cool enough in the eyes of most Gen Z customers.
And why would they? These devices will be replaced a year later by sequels with little regard for continuation, and the majority of them seem designed out of desperation to stand out in a crowded and fragmented market or look better than Samsung in press renders.
Perhaps it's time for Samsung and Google to unite, allow themselves to stand apart from the rest of the Android world, and level up to the next big thing.
