inspirator schreef op 15 december 2013 19:01:
''Change everything but your wife and children.''
''must start anew to reach loftier goals and ideals.''
Kan TomTom voorbeeld aan nemen !
Bestaat kans dat TomTom het pleegkind wordt van Samsung:
South Korea's Samsung is uneasy in the lead
Lee Kun-hee, the man who built the most successful, most admired and most feared business in Asia — a $288 billion behemoth that is among the most profitable in the world — had a message for his employees this year: You must do better.
At other companies, congratulations might have been in order. His companies were headed to another extraordinary year.
But this was Samsung, the South Korean industrial group that Mr. Lee, an elfin man with a stubborn will, transformed from a second-rate maker of household appliances into a conglomerate with a flagship electronics business that has left most rivals eating its silicon dust.
There would be no pat on the back for Samsung's 470,000 employees. Instead, in June, he sent a company-wide email sternly urging them to raise their game.
''As we move forward, we must resist complacency and thoughts of being good enough, as these will prevent us from becoming better,'' Mr. Lee, who is 71, wrote. Samsung's management, he said, ''must start anew to reach loftier goals and ideals.''
Two decades earlier, having taken over the company from his father, Mr. Lee met with dozens of his executives and gave them a similar order, one that remains embedded in company lore: ''Change everything but your wife and children.''
Technology analysts and consumers often compare Samsung to Apple. But the elephant in the room in any discussion of the Korean giant is another American technology company: Google.
The vast majority of Samsung's phones run on Android, Google's operating system.
Together, Samsung and Google have quickly taken over the global smartphone market. In the third quarter of the year, Android was installed on 81 percent of the mobile phones shipped worldwide, according to IDC, a research firm. That compared with 12.9 percent for Apple's iOS and 3.6 percent for Windows, the nearest rivals.
''Google created a product that helped Samsung make more money than all of Google,'' said Horace Dediu, an independent analyst in Helsinki, Finland.
That has been great for Samsung so far, but the downside is that the company has become more and more reliant on Google's software. As Samsung rode to the top of the mobile phone industry strapped to Android, the company sacrificed a degree of control over its mobile destiny.
More and more, smartphone hardware looks similar -- glass touch screen, nice camera, a few buttons. That has often made the mobile operating system, apps and services -- along with ''soft'' elements of the hardware, like the design and the user experience -- the more important distinguishing factors.
''When someone buys our handset, we want them to be interested in the whole experience,'' said Hong Won-pyo, president of the Media Solution Center, the content and services arm of Samsung Electronics.
''Combining excellent hardware innovation and software innovation -- when you combine them neatly, the value will be maximized and the consumer will appreciate our products because we integrated them.''
The combination of seamless hardware and software has been a crucial part of Apple's success. Once a user is dialed into Apple's system, it is hard to leave it for something else. Switching to an Android phone from an iPhone results in losing access to Apple's exclusive software, like its free text-messaging service, iMessage, or the plethora of third-party apps made only for iPhones.
This gives Apple the advantage of what some analysts call ''lock-in'' -- an advantage that Samsung doesn't enjoy with Android, because Samsung users can always switch to another Android phone, like one made by Motorola, and get many of the same features.
For several years, Samsung has been conducting research on mobile operating systems. Last year, Samsung merged that work with an industry project called Tizen, whose partners include Intel and other technology and telecommunications companies. Samsung is expected to introduce phones running the Tizen operating system soon, in partnership with mobile operators like NTT Docomo of Japan.
While there has been speculation that Samsung's alliance with Tizen is a move to distance itself from Google, the company says it is merely trying to provide consumers with a range of alternatives.
''I don't think they can be a dominant smartphone operating system in the near term,'' said a former Samsung executive who insisted on anonymity to protect business relationships. ''But it's an important step for Samsung to take at the moment. If they want a new success story, they will have to focus on the software side of things.''
www.cnbc.com/id/101273782