The Guarded Dominance of Apple, Samsung, and Google in the Smartphone Market

B. Smartphone Hardware

151. A smartphone’s hardware includes the frame and screen. Higher performing smartphones are typically constructed from better materials like glass and metal instead of plastic, manufactured to higher standards that make them more durable (e.g., water and dust proof), and have higher quality displays.

152. A smartphone’s hardware also includes the semiconductor chipsets that run the smartphone: central processing of software instructions, graphics, video, display, memory, data storage, and connection to wireless networks. Chipsets that offer superior performance—faster processing and network connections, better graphics, more storage—are costly. As a result, smartphone manufacturers typically include them only in more expensive performance smartphones.

153. Smartphone hardware includes other important components like cameras, and position and motion sensors. Performance smartphones typically have higher quality cameras, better battery life, wireless charging, and advanced biometrics such as face scanning.

154. Smartphones also contain several types of antennas that allow the phone to communicate with other smartphones, accessories, or other devices using standard communication protocols such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Near-Field Communications (NFC).

a. Wi-Fi is a wireless networking technology that uses radio waves to provide wireless high-speed Internet access through mobile devices, computers, printers, and other equipment. “Wi-Fi,” in particular, refers to IEEE 802.11 standards that define the protocols that enable communications with current Wi-Fi-enabled wireless devices such as wireless routers and access points.

b. Bluetooth is a wireless standard that allows smartphones to use shortwave radios to communicate with accessories like headphones and smartwatches. An industrywide Bluetooth standard specifies technological requirements to ensure that all Bluetooth devices can recognize and interact with each other. A typical Bluetooth signal has a range of about 30 feet.

c. Near Field Communication (NFC) allows smartphones to interact with NFCenabled devices like a credit card terminal at a coffee shop. NFC relies on shortrange wireless technologies, including radio signals, to communicate and share information. To operate, two NFC-enabled devices must typically be within four centimeters or less of one another.

155. Three device manufacturers, Apple, Samsung, and Google, account for approximately 94 percent of all smartphones by revenue in the United States. Apple and Samsung alone account for approximately 90 percent of all smartphone revenues in the United States.

156. Cloud-based technologies are run using hardware and software in remote computing centers (“the cloud”) rather than by hardware and software on a smartphone. The user experiences the technology on the phone but the complex computing that generates the rich experience and that executes the user’s commands happens in the cloud. Thus, cloud apps can deliver rich experiences on smartphones with less capable hardware than iPhones currently contain.