Who is winning and where of course depends upon what you are defining as winning. In this case, it's consumer satisfaction with smartphone technologies. It seems that Samsung beats
Owners responding to ACSI's national survey gave an 84-point score to both the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II, putting the two Samsung phones just past the 82-point iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S....(...)...It's at least clear that the American sentiment doesn't extend worldwide -- ACSI notes that South Koreans ranked the iPhone 5 higher than the Galaxy S III despite Samsung's home turf advantage.
Now I agree this isn't really all that important in the grander scheme of things. It might allow some bragging rights in advertising perhaps but those sorts of scores, bunched as they are, show that everyone's pretty happy with their shiny gewgaws. That's not to underplay the value of such advertising bragging rights though. The two national beer brands in Portugal are Sagres (named after the town it's brewed in) and Superbock. Both are, obviously as with almost all other lagers, the product of German emigrants to the country soon after the method of brewing this sort of lager was perfected in the 19 th century. But Superbock did a survey of the inhabitants of Sagres and asked which of the two they preferred. The answer being that more people from Sagres preferred Superbock to Sagres which provided them with a lovely tag line for an ad campaign.
So as I say, not greatly important these surveys but they can be fun.
However, there's a larger point behind this as well. It helps us to understand the value of trade. One lady I know is distinctly anti-trade, very much a localist in fact. That might explain why she's currently running the Green Party. But her ire about trade comes from looking at the statistics for it. I recall (not the exact numbers, but the argument) her getting very forceful on the fact that Germany exports chicken to England and England exports chicken to Germany. Why don't they just each eat their own and not waste resources doing the trade?
The logic here is obvious: why don't Americans just use Apple and Koreans Samsung? Why do we have all of this cross-trade going on in what is pretty much the same objects?
The free traders' response to this is simply that this is the way that people prefer it. Koreans seem to like Apples more than they like Samsungs. Americans seem to like Samsungs more than Apples. And that's why we have trade: for the whole point of the entire edifice that is the economy is that people should be able to have more of what they want. The trade of the chicken or the phones provides consumers in each market with what they value more. Indeed, we know this must be so otherwise the trade wouldn't be taking place.
Leaving us with the answer of why we have trade: because it makes people happier.
