Why Samsung's fires won't really help Apple in the end
Apple’s (AAPL) new iPhone 7 may not have blown anybody away, but at least it didn’t literally blow up like some of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 phones have. This is the thinking that has led many analysts to be bullish about the prospects of Apple’s new phone.
But this reading misses the fact that consumers who avoid Galaxy Note 7 won’t necessarily flock to its Apple equivalent, iPhone 7 Plus. In the end, Samsung’s woes might not have a direct impact on Apple.
That’s because it’s not simple to change from one operating system to another, and it can be annoying to port over data and learn a new system—no matter how intuitive it may be. That hassle could be enough to prevent a Samsung user from leaving the Android arena.
“Note 7 users are typically avid Samsung fans and even bypass the more popular GS7 and GS7e in favor of the Note series,” says Anthony Scarsella, research manager from IDC. “For an advanced user like a Note 7 owner to completely leave the platform over waiting a few weeks for a replacement is highly unlikely considering previous investments in the Play Store.”
There are also less drastic steps besides leaving the entire platform. The Galaxy Note 7 is but one of Samsung’s many offerings, and isn’t its flagship one — that’s the Galaxy S7. Unlike the small crowd over on the iOS side of the aisle, the Android crew rolls very deep, and there are other phablet options for Android users like Google and Huawei’s Nexus 6P, a well-reviewed option.
“Competing Android-based flagship Phablet vendors stand the best chance of winning over N7 customers in the short term,” says Scarsella.
Analyst Daniel Newman, principal at Futurum Research, brought up another interesting point telling CNBC that, “I don’t think the market pays a ton of attention to the news.”
All this simply means that a Samsung phone blunder may not be the reason all the initial pre-orders for the iPhone 7 Plus have sold out, in every color, and Apple stock is up 12.1% since the pre-order went live.
While the two companies do compete with each other for customers, Apple’s real competition when it launches a new iPhone is the last iPhone. Of course, people sometimes defect from one side to another. But many dig firmly into the platforms, held by the inertia of porting over their entire digital lives to the new OS.
Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on personal finance and tech. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.
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