Samsung Galaxy S3: Korean Tech Giant Takes Another Bite Out of Apple with Music Service to Take on iTunes

Eddie Wrenn
Daily Mail

T.J. Kang, senior vice president for Samsung's media department, said: 'Samsung is not known for our content services; we make good hardware products but we haven't done much in the content space but that's changing.

Samsung will today launch its flagship smartphone, taking the fight to Apple with the most pre-ordered gadget in history.

And while all eyes are on the launch of Samsung's hardware, the Korean tech giant launched another salvo against Apple with a competitor to the iPhone's long-established iTunes media store.

The Galaxy S3 is the successor to the S2 Android phone, which helped make Samsung the world's largest smartphone maker in 2011.

The phone, sporting a 4.8-inch screen, features eye-tracking technology so that it knows when to wake and when to sleep, and quad-core processors which give it the kind of computing power top-range PCs had just a few years ago.

It also comes with Samsung's take on Apple's 'Siri' voice control system, and 50GB of cloud storage thanks to a hook-up with the file-sharing service DropBox.

The Galaxy S3 is the successor to the S2 Android phone, which helped make Samsung the world's largest smartphone maker in 2011
Samsung has today officially announced the iTunes rival, a Music Hub allows users to upload music to the cloud and access it from a PC and up to five mobile devices.

First look at the Music Hub centre for the S3 phone
T.J. Kang, senior vice president for Samsung's media department, said: 'Samsung is not known for our content services; we make good hardware products but we haven't done much in the content space but that's changing.

'We are doing it to create a better experience for our users. There are things we could do better if we have complete control over all of the service.'

Speaking to expert mobile site Pocket-Lint, he said: 'We want to have the largest catalogue. We want to be bigger than Apple.'

The company has previously rebranded existing music and video services on its devices, where they compete with music stores from the likes of Google and Amazon and streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora Media.
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Fred Huet at Greenwich Consulting said the mobile phone was increasingly at the heart of a lot more media consumption, and Apple had established a formidable lead.

'A lot of the other players are still trying to find the magic formula that can use to counter iTunes,' he said.

Critics have raved about the model, calling it 'light years' ahead of the nine-month-old iPhone.

A spokesman for Vodafone UK said: 'In the two years that we've been offering pre-orders, it's the

Samsung sold 44.5 million smartphones in January to March - equal to nearly 21,000 every hour - giving it 30.6 percent market share.

Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones, taking 24.1 percent market share.

'The Galaxy S3 is a real challenger to the upcoming iPhone,' said Francisco Jeronimo, an IDC analyst based in London. 'This is likely be one of the most sold smartphones this year, though the real test will come when the next iPhone is launched.'

SO, CAN SAMSUNG'S MEDIA HUB TAKE ON APPLE'S ITUNES?
iTunes is the entrenched champion of media distribution, with deals with all the major content labels to let people get movies, TV and music on to their iDevices.

iTunes currently has 20million tracks available to download - but Samsung have done a good job at catching up, with 19million traks available.
Both devices allow you to purchase tracks at a range of prices, but in terms of the 'all you can eat' offers, Samsung allows you to pay £9.99 a month to stream music over the air, and download tracks for offline use. It also offers 100gb of personal space where you can upload tracks you own which are not on Samsung's platform.
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But iTunes' 'all-you-can-eat' model comes in a lot cheaper, at less than £25 for a year's worth of streaming - although without offline access.
However, as a first release, this is an interesting and well-considered development for Samsung.

iTunes is both much-loved and much-hated. Loved for its ease of use, but users often complain that they are locked into Apple's eco-system, and struggle to get non-Apple-purchased material onto their iDevices.

Music Hub is so far only available on the S3, but Samsung says it will be rolled out to other Samsung devices - including their brand of Smart TVs.

If Samsung gets a critical mass of supporters, it will be interesting to see long-term how this matches up to Android's generally 'open-access' philosophy, and whether Music Hub will eventually be accessible from other Android devices - and how other manufacturers such HTC, which has its own fledgling HTC Music store, will respond.

The race for global smartphone supremacy comes as Apple has accused Samsung of copying some of its products. The South Korean company counter-claims that Apple has infringed its patents. Both have denied the allegations, and a long-running court saga continues.

Apple plans to use a larger screen on the next iPhone, according to people familiar with the situation. The current iPhone 4S model was introduced last October.

Reviewers have praised the Samsung Galaxy S3 as the best phone on the market, outclassing its competitors - and even beating the iPhone at its own game.

TechRadar said 'if you're picking up an iPhone 4S: forget it' and Trusted Reviews concluded 'the S3 is light years ahead of Apple's profitable darling'.

And Stuff Magazine said the S3 has succeeded in 'toppling Apple's ageing starlet'.

In fairness to Apple, their latest phone is now nearly nine months old - a lifetime in the fast-moving mobile world.

The next iPhone is rumoured to arrive in October at the earliest - but Apple are notoriously secretive.

May 29th, 2012
Daily Mail