Welcome to the groovy train, you are about 5 years late to the party.
>On the chip front, TSMC has been outpacing them for years, and is getting all the contracts.
Actually TSMC more or less created the whole outsourcing fab business in the late 80's and has led the outsourcing business for the past 30 years. The fact that Samsung went from nothing in mid 2000's to #2 today is quite remarkable, even surpassing TSMC in 14nm and the first EUV rollout.
> The only thing I can think of that Samsung does better than anyone else is OLED, and others are catching up very quickly.
Samsung has been known for their displays for decades. On mobile OLED, Samsung had pretty much 95% market share for the past decade or so and I keep hearing about competitors in China and Taiwan that are in fact still 3-4 generation behind and busy sending spies to copy and steal SDS's IP, so I doubt it.
They are more out-marketed than "out-tech-ed".
Incorrect. Unable to compete and inadequate customer support are the reasons.
Samsung used to have a big user base in China. But product offerings from local manufactures became much better. Design, software and quality wise, they suit the customers' needs better. Samsung's products are simply - "meh".
In terms of customer support, Samsung treated Chinese customers like second class citizen. E.g. during the faulty emmc and fire-catching battery fiasco, they refused to offer the same level of customer service as they did in the US and Europe.
When the first/second case of exploding battery surfaced, Samsung accused the owner putting his phone in a microwave to cause the battery to explode.
Also Samsung adopts some dirty marketing tricks which is well known in China. They have been fined in Taiwan before.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/24/samsung-f...
All the factors combined, caused their market share to plummet.
In the premium market, Huawei is lapping them. Samsung used to vie for best camera. Now they're with Apple in lagging far behind the Pixel and P series.
>In the premium market, Huawei is lapping them
Where? In China? My personal opinion is when you dive deep, Huawei is more about marketing hype than substance. The tri-camera is Israel tech, they rely on Samsung for memory chip and OLED, things like their battery life achieved by furiously killing background apps might spur outcry elsewhere.
I think this is also where Amazon is leading the future to：Those who market the best win.
If your goes to r/Android, Huawei is at least as popular as Samsung, and even more of a topic maker. And that has been the case for sometime now.
I have a Samsung S10E, but that is because I can't own a Huawei in US, for there is no customer support here.
TBH, S10 is the best phone Samsung has made in THREE years and I am quite happy with it. The past gens of Galaxies, are good but boring yet expensive. Huawei is as expensive, but they somehow find a way to excite the consumer base with, what I would call, useful gimmicks, like 6 cameras stuff. Oppo/Vivo (BBK and its subsidiaries) does the same, but more from the 'hide-the-front-camera' mechanics side.
It doesn't matter where the tech is coming from, Israel doesn't make their phones, what matters is here is to come up with a complete package that people would pay for it.
So it isn't really controversial to say the Chinese makes the best Android phone in the world today. It is just funny those those phones are nowhere to be found in US.
I used to be one of them, constantly tweaking it, ROMs, root and flash, compile my own ROM, compare specs and eager to know what's new, but that's long ago, I've quit being a slave to my phone, I've realized I just need my phone to work when it needs to(like average people?), and I spend no more than 20 minutes per day on it now and never waste time on the phone itself.
Average people don't know and won't understand specs, that's where brands like Oppo and Vivo thrive, they are good at marketing, hell if you go into deep China you will hear salesgirls peddling OPPO/VIVO as the best of the best in the world.
Give you another example. I'm on the market for a new phone. I went to a local shop to get a feel of the latest offerings. While I was there, three groups of friends/couple/mother-and-son came to the shop and they all talked about Huawei. This is not in China btw.
So what? Apple didn't make their own camera sensors. Apple didn't make their memory chips. Apple used Samsung's OLED too. And iPhones are great products.
Of course, you can argue Huawei's software is lagging behind Apple, but where is Samsung standing?
On the phone front, they were used to selling phones at premium pricing only relying on their brand name. You don't have to look past Nokia or Blackberry to see how that will end. They're not really innovative, and while their devices are generally quality, they've pushed the price point too high. Xiaomi does 90 percent of it for 30 percent of the price. Huawei does 200 percent for about the same price.
On the chip front, TSMC has been outpacing them for years, and is getting all the contracts.
The only thing I can think of that Samsung does better than anyone else is OLED, and others are catching up very quickly.
I think Samsung will join the ranks of HTC and LG as also rans in short time...