03 Feb 05 Does Samsung come close to Apple in branding and design?
I was at the local Apple store this evening and I met these two guys who were there to pick up some wi-fi gear. One of them spotted the Shuffle and within minutes he was buying it. His friend couldn’t resist and picked one too. And while the cashier was preparing their bills, another man rushed in and grabbed one. I guess it is a good time to be an Apple dealer.
Last night we were talking about Apple stuff and we were wondering if there was any other company that can match Apple in designing great stuff. Sony seems to running out of steam. In the competitive mp3 player segment, Creative Labs is trying to fight by fattening their gadgets with features, a trend that contrasts Apple’s mantra of “simplicity” .
If I had to name a company that comes close to Apple today in design and branding, it would be Samsung.
From a recent issue of Economist: Brand new
In the midst of this frenzy of new and unfamiliar gizmos, product features would seem to count for everything. But companies in the hypercompetitive electronics industry are discovering something unexpected, and curious: brands matter almost as much as dazzling new technology.
One of the clearest demonstrations of this is South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, which made a big splash this year in Las Vegas. Samsung was once best known for making things like cheap microwave ovens. In the past few years it has transformed itself into one of the “coolest†brands around, and is successfully selling stylish flat-screen TVs, digital cameras and mobile phones. After a record-breaking year, it is poised to overtake Motorola as the world’s second-biggest maker of mobile phones. And it is snapping at the heels of Japan’s Sony for leadership in the consumer-electronics business
Samsung has won a total of 19 Excellence Awards. Guess which is the only other company to have won that many?
Businessweek had an article titled Samsung Design last year that covered the importance Samsung gives to product design.
The office park in northern New Jersey hardly looks like a place that plays a role in cutting-edge design. Hard by a highway interchange, the two-story building is about as distinctive as white rice. But climb the stairs to the second floor, and you’ll see designers from Samsung Electronics Co. studying in painstaking detail the American consumer psyche. There, engineer Lee Byung Moo watches from behind a two-way mirror as three women and two men stuff a stainless steel refrigerator with the contents of a half-dozen bags of groceries. After the five have finished and given their opinions on several potential configurations of drawers and compartments, Lee and two others rush into the room to take photographs and note exactly where the “shoppers” have put the ice cream, chicken, beer, milk, and other food. “We want to know the tastes of American customers because we need to develop products that fit their lifestyle,” says Lee.
The change started in 1993, when Chairman Lee Kun Hee visited retailers in Los Angeles and saw that Samsung products were lost in the crowd, while those from Sony Corp. (SNE ) and a few others stood out.
The boss spoke. Samsung listened. And the company’s design push was under way. To attract better, younger designers, Samsung in 1994 moved its design center to Seoul from sleepy Suwon, a small city an hour south of the capital. That same year, Samsung hired U.S. design firm IDEO to help develop a computer monitor — the first of many such collaborations with IDEO and other leading consultancies.
Then in 1995, the company set up the Innovative Design Lab of Samsung (IDS), an in-house school where promising designers could study under experts from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., one of the top U.S. design schools. Samsung designers were dispatched to Egypt and India, Paris and Frankfurt, New York and Washington to tour museums, visit icons of modern architecture, and explore ruins.
Many of the new design ideas are coming from outside. Last year, Samsung started sending designers abroad to spend a few months at fashion houses, cosmetics specialists, or design consultancies to stay current with what’s happening in other industries. Lee Yun Jung, a senior designer who works on colors and finishes, spent last autumn in residence at a furniture designer in Italy.
So Samsung must continue to reinvent itself. In the past four years, the company has doubled its design staff, to 470, adding 120 of those just in the past 12 months. And since 2000, its design budget has been increasing 20% to 30% annually. To keep an eye on trends in its most important markets, Samsung now has design centers in London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Tokyo, and this year it opened one in Shanghai.
The article also links to an interview with the head of Samsung’s Industrial Design team Chung Kook Hyun.
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Sim Wong Hoo still needs some enlightenment. They could start by hiring ideo, but what he really needs is a mindset change.
I suspect that the importance Samsung places on design will pay off even more in time to come. But still a lot more catching up to do with Apple - the number of design awards does not necessarily convert to emotional appeal.
In the context of MP3 Players, the ipod definately is ranked high. However, there are quite a few out there that rival the design of an ipod.
I guess the Ipod is moving on momentum generated earlier. Kind of like the 2 wheeler scenen in US. You have a 100 year old company by the name of Harley Davidson which is an icon. There are far superior bikes which are less than half harley’s age whose bike run circles around the harley. And, they look much neater and more appealing.
Apple has that “cool” feel to it which is just not present in any of its competitors. Is it because of the great industrial design? Or the simplicity?
Creative has some good products, but they have the mentality of “extra features”. Sometimes extra features are good, but most of the time, they just get in the way.
Samsung has an appealing design as well. At least in Asia, there are no viable competitors to Nokia and Samsung. Guess why? Both are easy to use and look nice. Companies should cut out some useless features and instead spent the money saved on design and usability.
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