Original topic:

Samsung invest $10M to fix Dex App PC parity and make $10B

(Topic created: 08-21-2024 12:14 PM)
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atxjoe
Constellation
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Galaxy S23

I sold my iPhone XR and bought my S23+ to be a Work PC replacement device.  Because it sucked lugging a laptop back and forth between home and work.  I often forget that I brought my laptop home with me, and commute into work only to find I don’t have a computer to do my job.  But I always have my phone.  If my phone could be a PC my life would get far easier.  I also bought two Samsung M8 monitors for home and work to make docking & charging easy.

I gave Dex 2 months of everyday use.  Not having to carry a laptop bag was a great quality of life improvement.  Having my desktop and latest work always in with me was super convenient.  But ultimately I reverted back to PC because there are just too many problems with the Dex experience not being the PC experience.

Dex is close.  Like 85% of the way there.  But there’s a long tail of issues I couldn’t work around.  Almost all the issues are related to apps wanting to run in mobile or app mode while in Dex vs. Web Desktop mode.  It’s infuriating.  Because when I’m able to get apps to open in desktop web mode then life is great.  Everything just works.  I assume that Samsung Dex engineers don’t actually use Dex for their everyday devices.  If Samsung Engineers were forced to use Dex everyday most of these issues would be fixed. 

If Samsung could fix this issue then $10B is not an unreasonable revenue goal.  Apple’s iphone revenue is more than $200B annually.  How many iPhone users and how many companies could Samsung convince to migrate from iPhone to Galaxy if it meant saving thousands of dollars by not buying PCs?  I think 5% of 200B is an easy target.

Samsung engineers, here’s what you need to do to make billions of dollars.  Make the following apps work in Dex just like on PC.  

App Parity Phase 1:

  • Slack
  • Outlook
  • Chrome
  • Google Workspace
  • Google Drive
  • Office 365
  • Atlassian stuff
  • VS Code

Along with app parity you need to make Google account switching EASY.

As a work and home Dex user I need the ability to easily switch between multiple google accounts in my chrome browser so that I can quickly access work and personal files.

That's it!  $10B!  

I love the S23+ as a phone.  No regrets buying it other than I had to teach my mother how use Whatsapp to replace Facetime.  But I don’t recommend Dex to my friends because it doesn’t offer a true desktop experience.  But it easily could!

2 Replies
TipsyTrex
Supernova
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Galaxy S23
They should make the apps better, sure, but the 5% thing is hilarious. The number of iPhone users that would switch out of the iPhone ecosystem because dex gets slightly better apps is likely a three digit number--it's the primary computing device already for the majority of users. Theres a reason computer and tablet sales have been struggling.

Stick with feature recommendations instead of astronomically overinflated revenue estimates.
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atxjoe
Constellation
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Galaxy S23

Disagree.  But you're in good company because Samsung hasn't fixed these long standing Dex issues.  Fast forward 5 years and no doubt there will be a mobile device PC experience from someone, does Samsung want to beat Apple or Google?  Google would be the other obvious choice as they don't sell a PC in addition to their other strengths.

My argument is that Dex would disrupt the PC market by being the first to make a phone-sized device that offers a PC experience.   I'm not arguing that Samsung would displace iPhone(in the US) in a head-to-head personal phone contest.

You underestimate the number of people that would switch to a single device solution for work phone&PC if it existed. But the requirement is the device must offer parity to existing desktop app experiences.  Web versions of most popular apps already offer feature parity to the Window/MacOS versions.  Samsung needs only minimal work to ensure those web versions open in the proper web desktop experience when in Dex mode.  Ideally, just fix the native app to run at desktop resolutions in Dex, but that might require Samsung to pay Slack, Google, etc. to fix their apps.  It may be easier for Samsung to trick Slack web to render for desktop and avoid reversion to either mobile web or mobile native app resolutions.

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