Samsung vice chairman Kwon Oh-hyun has admitted the tech giant’s software isn’t as good as its hardware during a candid moment at the company’s annual “analysts day” presentation in Seoul, South Korea.
During the presentation, Kwon revealed that the company has already shifted around half of its R&D efforts to software rather than hardware.
“Industry-wide tech development is shifting from hardware to software,” Kwon says.
Kwon used a baseball metaphor to describe the Korean tech giant’s position in the software industry during a candid response to an audience question.
“When I looked online, he said, the [Boston] Red Sox led the Major League in batting. But when I looked at their pitching performance, it was just the middle of the league. But they still won the world championship,” Kwon says
“Even though we’re doing the software business, we’re not as good as we are in hardware.”
Aside from a large investment in R&D spending, Kwon revealed the tech giant could be in the market for a takeover.
“We are quite conservative [in terms of takeovers], but we’ve changed our mind. We will aggressively acquire some companies as long as they provide nice technology,” Kwon says.
Meanwhile, Samsung has also announced a temporary increase in the share of money it pays developers for using its in-app purchase API, rather than Google’s.
Until April next year, the company says it will split app purchases in an 80:20 split – with 80% to the developer and 20% to Samsung – rather than 70:30 as it is at present.
Developers will have to use Samsung’s In-App Purchase 2.0 API in order to be eligible, and app sales through Samsung’s app store are not eligible for the offer.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
