Samsung or Apple

In 2008, Samsung took second place in the US cell phone market by overtaking Motorola. At that time, Samsung was developing very slowly in the US cell phone market (Carson, P., 2008). The company also found many ways to improve its sales by offering its phones for free. Despite that, Samsung has succeeded in Europe and Asia, and some say that in the future Samsung will become the new ACE. However, the iPhone has sold about 37 million for the entire 2011 while Samsung still remained the largest manufacturer of cell phones (Albanesius C., 2012). In 2011, Samsung shipped about 95 million cell phones, which is 278 percent more than in 2010, compared to 25 million. The reasons why Samsung became the leading brand was the strategy of offering a full line of cell phone products, through a variety of pricing, features, and operating systems.

One of the reasons for the popularity of Samsung at that time was that Samsung already had a 4G network, while the iPhone did not catch up with its 3G network.

In 2013, Samsung sold about 12.5 million smartphones to China in the first three months, and for the first time in three months, Samsung sold more than 10 million smartphones to other countries. There were about 18.5% of Chinese Samsung smartphone users, which grew by 2.2 % compared with the previous three months. After that, Samsung also became the most popular smartphone brand in the world in the first three months of 2013. However, in the next 2013, Samsung still faced hard competition with local Chinese brands, such as Huawei, Lenovo and ZTE, in the Chinese market (Olson, P., 2013).

Back in 2010, the iPhone 4S was sold about 47 million (Albanesius C., 2012). And in 2011, the iPhone beat all other brands in many phone shops, such as AT&T, Sprint and Verizon. During the same year, about 1.8 million iPhones were sold, and AT & T sold about 7.6 million iPhones. Apple overtook Samsung as the world’s largest cell phone maker in the last quarter of 2011 year. After that, Apple also sold about 35.5 million iPhones in the fourth quarter, which is about 23.8 % more than a year ago, while Samsung sold 34 million. The researcher also said, that the iPhone continues to break new records, and that the country that sold most of the iPhone is Japan (Calvin et al, 2008). Due to that factor the number of sales of other Apple products has also increased. A survey of 4,000 North American consumers was conducted, which found that demand for iPhones had risen dramatically after two months of iPhone 4S production (Moscaritolo, A., 2012).

Apple Inc. Pricing strategy

Steve Jobs was a master at using price baits, reference prices, in rushing, which proves that his shiny aluminum toys were a good deal. In 2010, Apple introduced the popular iPod Touch media player, which was divided into three prices: 229, 299 and 399 dollars, depending on its capacity. The researcher also said that Apple also used price baits when they set the price for their products. The lures in marketing were products, services or price indicators that the business did not want you to take, but it is used as a guide to make other products look better. For example, the price of iPod Touch, which is estimated at 229, 299 and 399 dollars, depends on the capacity. At the same time, the iPhone 4 was only $ 199 because of the higher price of the iPod Touch, it pushed people to buy the iPhone 4 because it seemed more valuable. Apple also set a high price for its other products, such as the first iPhone, which cost about $ 599, but only $ 199 on the iPhone 4.

In addition, it made people spend more money when they bought Apple products below average. When people connect to an iPad or iPhone, Apple probably counts on future consumer purchases, rental videos, and iAd clicks on advertising applications. In addition, they relied on numerous contracts signed by consumers for a two-year telephone contract with a monthly data transfer fee. Because of all the strategies that Apple Inc. used, it influenced consumers and made them pay more for their products that other smartphone brands. (Kunz, 2010).

There are many differences between them. Firstly, this is market demand, Apple is now the leader in the cell phone market all over the world, but Samsung is a strong competitor to Apple. If Apple wants to maintain its position, it must find other strategies or ways to improve its products. One of the most influential strategies that Samsung used was to lower prices, making it more affordable for consumers.