Despite Google’s best efforts, Samsung remains the closest Android alternative to iPhone, and the Korean manufacturer and Apple essentially parcel up the premium segment between them. Little surprise then that Samsung is replicating some of the smartest parts of iPhone’s playbook to keep users from leaving its walled garden.
Apple’s stop-users-leaving playbook has two dimensions. The first is the stickiness of its walled garden apps and services. Apple is the master here, with its services business chasing hard on the tail of its product business; beyond iCloud, music, gaming, this includes iMessage, accused of anti-competitiveness for this very reason.
Samsung has a harder task here, given its reliance on Google and Android for so much—its recent submission to Google Messages neatly tells the tale. But it’s trying, as illustrated by its decision to force users into opening a Samsung account to access its own app store, where its own core apps—amongst many others—can be found.
The second dimension of Apple’s playbook is security, with users having an intangible trust in the devices they use and the data they store. Here, Apple built an untouchable market lead from the get-go, and comes back to that core message year after year. Just as we’re seeing now with Chrome versus Safari and the privacy of on-device AI.
Cue Samsung’s announcement that its Knox offering is being expanded. The focus here is hardening the Samsung ecosystem, which is Apple’s 101. “That’s why we’ve built Knox Matrix,” it says, “our next frontier of security and vision for the future. Knox Matrix functions as your private blockchain system where connected devices ensure security at core stages through multi-layered and intelligent cross-checking threat monitoring across compatible devices for spam, viruses, and malware.”
The more Samsung products you have, the more secure you will be—just as with Apple. There is no better security on one device than acknowledging a new login or similar with a code sent to another trusted device that’s already logged-in. The bar for an attacker is higher than any other form of MFA bar a physical key.
And for logins to other websites and services, “Credential Sync secures your information when moving data from device to device in a protected cloud network, making it easier to manage multiple logins while encrypting sensitive information. By sharing credentials across devices, we aim to protect your entire device ecosystem—so you never have to sacrifice security for connectivity or convenience.”
Samsung says it is now going further than just credentializing devices, with its Trust Chain, in which “connected devices monitor each other for security threats, provide notifications if ever attacked and share actions taken to block the threat.” And while this runs cross-OS, it is all Samsung, of course: “You can enjoy strong security across the board with Knox Matrix whether your Samsung devices are based on Android, Tizen, Windows or other operating systems.”
None of these features are all new—they have been deployed on some devices or previewed and announced. But the news is that Samsung is expanding Knox to more Galaxy devices across its S series, A series and Tab S series running One UI 6. You can check whether your Galaxy device is protected here. The update will bring new features including Passkeys and Knox Vault for sensitive data, and it all expands the trusted ecosystem for which you can read walled garden. That’s the smart play here—it’s good for Samsung, but it’s also good for users.
Samsung isn’t wrong, of course, all this is a huge consideration when considering changing phones. And the deeper the security layer runs on a device and across devices, the more convenient and seamless for users and the more an inconvenience to set up all over again. Samsung is only doing what Apple has done so successfully for so many years, Google is doing the same, but is hampered because its Android ecosystem makes it harder to be too blatantly Pixel focused.
Samsung says it “wants you to be able to navigate this increasingly connected world freely and comfortably with Samsung Galaxy, both now and in the future.” These innovations are exactly what your phone should provide and you should ensure your phone is updated if compatible. Bottom line, though, this will become a reason why you’ll stick to Samsung and not buy a new Pixel 9 or—worse for them—an iPhone.
