There’s nothing wrong with a
little healthy competition, and often when rival companies are vying for business it can lead to some fantastic product and service development for customers. That was the case in the famous Cola Wars between Pepsi and Coke, when promotions and clever advertising campaigns meant people were given free gifts and other perks.
Opposing companies have also helped to develop the online gaming industry. With such a large customer base ready to spend money, there are many casinos and software developers vying for every player’s business. They’re all trying to outdo each other, which means some truly spectacular offers for you, and some state of the art games too.
Sporting competition between companies can, however, be taken much too far. This seems to be the case between Apple and Samsung. The war between the American and Korean tech giants has been going on for some time, and has so far cost over $15 billion. The most notable example of this is the patent case. Samsung was found guilty of infringing on several of Apple’s patents and was ordered to pay back $400 million, but even this is now being disputed, as Samsung argues that it should get to pay less.
In this hostile environment, and driven by the need to generate profits in a maturing mobile device market, Samsung cut some serious corners and rushed production of the Galaxy Note 7 in order to beat the new iPhone’s release. Poor design and production led to the batteries of several devices catching fire, and the company has now officially ended production and issued a worldwide recall.
While many insiders have commented that what happened to Samsung could have happened to anyone, they’ve also acknowledged that the damage to the Samsung brand may be irreparable. It’s true that Samsung has introduced its own Tizen operating system, but Tizen phones haven’t shifted anywhere near the amount of units that Samsung’s Android phones have.
Solid hardware is what Samsung is known for, and prior to the Galaxy Note 7 incident the company had been riding a wave of success with this. Critics and customers had been impressed with the Galaxy S6 and S7, as well as the Gear 2 wearable device. The latest blunder has undone all of that good work, and whether Samsung can recover remains to be seen. This might be the end of its feud with Apple, as well as the end of many other things.
