According to a report about total smartphone subscribers in the U.S in 2013, iPhone ate up all its competitors including its biggest rival, Samsung. However, the war of the two giant companies is far from over.

In term of brand positioning, Apple differentiate itself by building up a image of great innovation. When people talk about Apple, “creative and expensive” immediately pop out in their mind. On the other hand, Samsung is more affordable for most people, which works as a cost advantage for Samsung. Unlike Samsung, Apple build its competitive advantage by continuous innovation which can be proved by the latest iPhone 5s. In my personal perspective, Apple is more successful in leveraging brand positioning. People can easily connect such words like Steve Jobs, creativity and smart with Apple. However, it is more difficult to think about the characteristics of Samsung. Every company has to make up his own characteristic in the way that authors make up the characters of their stories. Apple is more like a real human being who has clear features and cannot be replaced, whereas the features of Samsung are not that clear.

Still, there are a lot we can learn from Samsung. If you are a big fan of Korean dramas, you can find that all of the people in the play use Samsung. I was very impressed by this kind of method of marketing. Samsung take advantage of the influential Korean dramas to boost its sales. K-pop stars are fairly popular in Asia and fans of the K-pop stars just follows their idols to buy Samsung. Also, Korean dramas have the fashionable image which Samsung have built through sponsoring the drama making.

Reference:

Apple’s iOS ate up Android, Blackberry U.S. market share losses this summer(Oct. 4),Daniel Dilger

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/10/05/data-bites-dogma-apples-ios-ate-up-android-blackberry-us-market-share-losses-this-summer