The Year of Samsung ⇥ qz.com

MG Siegler on Saturday reflects on “the fifth horseman“:

We all know the “four horsemen” of tech: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. These are the companies that pretty much everyone agrees will shape the foreseeable future of the tech sector. In some circles, that list makes waves for who is not included: Microsoft. But any rational thinker (meaning those outside of Redmond or anyone who hasn’t made a career as a .Net developer) knows that Microsoft simply no longer belongs on that list.

But that doesn’t mean the list is perfect. In fact, I do think there’s an omission that’s becoming a glaring one: Samsung.

Samsung is huge. They seem to have products in every category of industry with a microchip. At the moment, they’re best known for their smartphone lineup. They’re really the only company making a profit in the Android world (see also today’s announcement from HTC).

Christopher Mims of Quartz projects that all of this means that 2013 will be the year of Samsung:

The company’s diverse portfolio buffers it against the success or failure of any one product, but it also means that Samsung competes in increasingly commoditized products with manufacturers throughout mainland China and Taiwan.

They might out-compete it eventually. But for now Samsung can boast of being the largest vertically integrated technology company on the planet.