Samsung didn't win due to their extensive marketing. They released a viable contender to the iPhone, and then went about improving it for 5+ generations. Success brought in more money for marketing, but they did it right in the first place and kept iterating. See HTC as an example of a company with a good initial phone and marketing budget but who couldn't keep up and fell behind.

Samsung spends an ENORMOUS amount of money on marketing compared to Apple. Here's a graph from about two years ago:

https://twitter.com/asymco/status/396253597551570944

A misunderstanding, I didn't mean Samsung originally, but Samsung in the past 2 years (S4 and S5 to be exact). Their dominance in the past 2 years, in my opinion, has a lot more to do with marketing than with making great products. I completely agree with you that Samsung's initial success was due to putting out a quality alternative to the iPhone.

They definitely have won out compared to other OEMs because of their deep pockets.

http://83-136-248-155.uk-lon1.host.upcloud.com/wp-content/up...

http://83-136-248-155.uk-lon1.host.upcloud.com/wp-content/up...

I feel like another reason is that Motorola completely screwed the pooch on letting Verizon own the Droid trademark instead of owning the brand of their phones themselves.

At $99 unlocked, they can't pull off more than a Moto E or so, not even Moto G levels. Amazon can only subsidize so much. And the phone isn't the best device for content consumption, other than music, but music is cheap, and most people don't buy songs anymore these days.

I think they should've done one around the Nexus 5 level in terms of specs, and since it's coming 9 months later, it should cost like $299, or even $249, while still having that great camera. And sell it worldwide, unlocked. I think that would've been a much better strategy for them. The phone itself already is around Nexus 5 level, but with lower res screen, cheaper components except for the camera. Then take out those 4 cameras and AT&T's cut, and it should've been very doable.

At $200 on contract, or $600 unsubsidized (not even unlocked), it makes very little sense to buy one just for that parallax effect, which will be cool for like 2 days, and then you'll get bored with it.

There's still too much value to be had in high end smartphones for them to start competing on price. They're competing on ecosystems.

I'd bet that at&t had a ton to do with the rate and contract terms.

We don't need a company like Google and Amazon to make new phones, we need completely new carriers.