South Korea based Samsung Electronics is planning to acquire several mobile content providers, in a bid to compete in global digital music market with Apple, Google and Amazon.com.
According to the South Korean firm, it has made its strong presence in TVs, smartphones, chips and display screens by packing internally sourced components into consumer gadgets, while its software has been a weak link.
Samsung Media Solution Center senior vice president Kang Tae-jin was quoted by Reuters as saying that the firm is getting a message from the top to ramp up the software capability, and buy rather than build, if needed.
"Our focus on software is primarily aimed at driving hardware sales, rather than making money," Tae-jin said.
"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"
Samsung intends to create Music Hub operating on various consumer devices range from smartphones to Internet-enabled TVs and fridges in addition to monetising it by clipping up with an ad platform.
"We have an internal target to break even in software. But, in general, selling content won’t make much of a contribution to the bottom line," Kang said.
Content from our partners
"We see other new business opportunities associated with content."
In a bid to counter US based iPhone maker Apple’s expected launch of online streaming music service Samsung had acquired anonline music service mSpot and has developed its own Music Hub service in May 2012 to take on Google’s Android Music Player,Apple’s iTunes and Amazon’s Cloud Player.
