One of the employees reportedly raised the question regarding why the company is showing ads and promotions in its stock apps. The said employee probably worked in the customer service department and was having too many complaints about the ads interfering with the user experience. Well, that’s just a guess. The bigger picture here is the President’s response. According to the report, TM Roh explicitly confirmed that Samsung will gradually remove ads from all its stock apps with new updates in the coming weeks and months. There’s no specific timeframe as to when the process will start. But the Samsung Mobile head said the company “listens to the voices of employees and users.” It hasn’t been long since Samsung started showing ads and promotions in its stock apps. There has been an expected outrage over this move, as ads affect the user experience. So this decision comes as a welcome change from the company. Samsung has been gradually improving its software experience, with improved update pace and longer support period. Removing ads will further help the company distinguish its products from Chinese rivals such as Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo. All these brands show ads in the stock apps.
Samsung wants to improve its ecosystem to lure customers
It’s no secret that Samsung is struggling to maintain its status quo in the smartphone industry. The Korean firm has just lost the top spot to Chinese rival Xiaomi, which has managed to overthrow Samsung without even entering the world’s richest smartphone market: the US. But it’s not like Samsung has suddenly started making bad phones. Its latest flagships consistently set a new bar for Android OEMs. The problem is that the Korean giant is failing to match Xiaomi’s value offerings. The Chinese firm has a smaller team and a smaller offline presence, so its expenses are lesser. Combined with the company’s relative disregard of high profit margins, Xiaomi phones offer more for less and Samsung seemingly can’t match that. So what will Samsung do to compete with Xiaomi? Well, it appears the answer is to build an ecosystem that offers a better user experience. There are already reports of the company investing big to build a robust tech ecosystem. The decision to remove ads from its stock mobile apps could be part of this effort. This will certainly improve the user experience and the trust in Samsung devices. It will be interesting to see how the Korean giant goes about handling this competition against Xiaomi from here on.
