How does Samsung plan to keep its hold on the insanely competitive market for Android devices? One obvious way will be through using its enormous marketing budget but the company is also investing in other differentiators that don’t involve ads about Santa Claus sexting with his wife. The Wall Street Journal has done an in-depth preview of Samsung’s big developer conference that kicks off in San Francisco this week and has found that the company is encouraging developers to make apps that are “more than just Android” as it seeks to create a hefty suite of Samsung-centric software that rival Android manufacturers won’t be able to top.
Although the Journal says Samsung executives admit “privately” that building a separate Samsung app ecosystem will be a tall order, the company has already had success in getting Twitter to develop a Samsung-exclusive app designed to take advantage of the company’s stylus-equipped devices such as the Galaxy Note. The Journal also says that Samsung has come to an agreement with Dropbox that “gives customers of Samsung’s high-end smartphones an extra dollop of storage space on the popular cloud-based service, which is integrated into Samsung’s interface.”
The trouble, though, is that Samsung will essentially be trying to pull the same trick that Microsoft and BlackBerry have been trying to pull in getting developers interested in investing money making apps for platforms other than iOS and Android. Microsoft has had some success in using large piles of cash to grease developers’ palms and it wouldn’t be surprising to see Samsung take a similar approach. Even so, dishing out cash to get today’s hottest apps is no guarantee that you’ll get tomorrow’s hottest apps, so it looks like Samsung has a lot of work to do.
