Under pressure from Google, Samsung will remove its work and native apps from Android

In early January, while the rest of the tech world working for the consumer wondered at the size of the upcoming Samsung tablet at CES, Google was alarmed by what they saw on the screen of this massive tile — the new fancy Magazine UX interface.

As Bonnie Cha from Re / code wrote: “Magazine UX looks like a mix of Flipboard and Microsoft’s Metro interface with its dynamic main panel and application shortcuts.” In other words, the interface looked far gone from the way Google for Android sees it.
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Many sources familiar with the companies think that the two technology giants have begun to develop a series of extensive agreements at CES that will align Samsung’s Android’s vision with Google. The results of the negotiations, which have just begun in secret from the public, already underline the extent to which Google is making efforts to influence the fate of the open-source Android world.

The agreement with Samsung looks like Google is opposed to the growth of Android devices that do not use its services, especially in China. A new ABI study report showed that 25 percent of Android devices shipped in Q4 did not have a pre-installed set of applications and services from Google.

Google and Samsung declined to comment on the talks. Samsung added: “To continue our efforts to create a great user experience that will become part of people's lives, Samsung will continue to provide various and innovative services and presentations on the presentation of content on our mobile devices.”

This week, Samsung and Google announced a large-scale cross-licensing deal that covers mobile devices and other unnamed categories. But that's not all.

Although the exact details of these meetings are still unknown, sources close to the talks say that Samsung is not only thinking, or is already going, to remove or replace the Magazine UX interface in their future devices, but more importantly, new Samsung devices will include a set of applications and services from Google in order to purchase movies, music and other content, to the detriment of its own software, which has already become the pride of Samsung in the development process as a leader in the mobile industry.

It is not clear what concessions Google could make for its part. The company could, for example, agree to work with Samsung on some Nexus or offer other cooperation.

The relationship between Google and Samsung went through “huge changes, dramatic changes over the past few weeks,” as described by their source.

Dramatic changes

Samsung is currently the largest manufacturer of Android devices and controlled 32 percent of the global smartphone market in Q3 2013, according to information from Gartner. About 82 percent of smartphones on the market run on Android. Samsung delicately retained its independence from Google. Many in the industry have guessed on tea leaves in search of signs that the two leaders are moving in opposite directions, especially after Google bought Motorola, a competing handset maker.

The priority for pre-installed Google Play applications is obviously to the detriment of the Samsung Media Solution Center group. Over the past 2 years, Samsung has created a service with movies and TV shows and acquired the music service mSpot .

The software from Samsung WatchON is a remote control application that connects existing services, such as Netflix, and is best suited for people who have several Samsung devices, including televisions. Another application in the Samsung arsenal is ChatON. This is a cross-platform messenger that can work both on non-Samsung devices on Android and on iPhones. Our source was not sure if ChatON would be overboard.

But Samsung's apps were greatly lost in the vast Android world, and switching to Google Play apps does not seem such a big loss.

Walt Mossber from Re / code in his review of the Galaxy S4 wrote: “I found that Samsung’s software is often useless, repeats standard Android applications, or, in some cases, has only a part of their functionality.”

GoogleFlex

As the largest developer of applications for Android, Google began to put much more effort to ensure that device manufacturers pre-set its services, separately and in addition to the Android OS kernel.

In recent months, more and more innovations in the Android ecosystem are being introduced by Google not into the open source operating system, but into Google Play’s proprietary services and its suite of applications. While there are advantages to keeping Android open source, Google can be confident that some of its developments are used only on devices that use its services, unlike, for example, the Kindle Fire, which uses the Android OS, but includes Amazon services.

Google Play apps are also available for device manufacturers, but under tough conditions. Google no longer allows phone manufacturers to choose whether to include only one application in their phone, Google wants them to pre-install the entire set.

As one of the leaders of the mobile direction, who competes with Google apps for Android, put it, “Google plays by the same rules as Apple. It may be open-source from below, but not from above. ”

The fact that Apple is so tightly controlling a bundle of its own software and hardware seems to be the only thing that distinguishes Google from M-word (word for M? Microsoft? Monopolist?), Given its large and growing market share. But now it is changing. Another software maker called Google’s recent actions reminiscent of Microsoft’s monopoly flourishing. “They are stepping on very thin ice,” he said.

What is worse than fragmentation?

In fact, Google now makes 78 of its own Android apps, and in some cases presets more than a dozen of them by default into new phones.

This is especially important because Google applications are closely related to each other. Google has applications for most of the most important tasks on your phone or tablet — email, messaging, maps, data storage, browser, reading news, searching and consuming media content — and they are so tied to each other that tasks flow literally from one applications to another.

Users usually welcome this kind of bundle between software - at least take an iPhone user - and Google sees this as an opportunity to positively affect the Android community suffering from fragmentation. However, there is a terrible amount of Google in this bundle. This means that Android is becoming more like a super tool for Google, rather than a foundation in the form of an operating system, topped with a choice between applications.

In addition, all this can be bad news for independent application developers. Samsung gave a huge boost to independent applications and services like Dropbox, Flipboard, SwiftKey and TripAdvisor, including them in the list of pre-installed applications on their devices. Now, the likelihood that Samsung will enter into agreements to preinstall applications in the future is very small, especially in cases where Google makes a competing application.

Without a strong supporter like Samsung, with all its leverage and market power, the success rate for small developers on the Android platform will be higher in this new era.