“Samsung Electronics, which has vaulted the value chain on the strength of its hardware, will go out and buy mobile content providers, a senior executive told Reuters, to compete with Apple, Google and Amazon.com in a global digital music market worth nearly $9 billion.
The South Korean electronics giant has muscled its way to global leadership in TVs, smartphones, chips and display screens – packing internally sourced state-of-the-art components into consumer gadgets – but software remains a weak link.
“The message we’re getting from the top is to raise software capability, and buy rather than build, if needed,” Kang Tae-jin, senior vice president of Samsung’s Media Solution Center, said in an interview. “Our focus on software is primarily aimed at driving hardware sales, rather than making money. We have a full range of handsets in so many countries, and, to better market our products, we thought it’s better to start our own software business.””
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