Google v Samsung: who will win this battle of the handsets?

As Samsung dominates the Android market, one has to wonder, who controls whom? Is Google really in charge, or is Samsung so strong it can now rule the Android game?

This morning's thoughts are harder to focus than usual: I'm sitting across the street from Sciences Po – the Paris Institute of Political Studies – one of France's elite graduate schools. As hundreds of students gather at the door, smoking (and littering the pavement with very Parisian hauteur), I'm dismayed by the thought that many of these smart, eagerly alive young people will die from lung cancer. Sombre thoughts made more acute by the loss of a dear friend two days ago to that very illness – the third smoking-induced death of a close relation in a matter of months. This from a legal drug that's much more dangerous than some that can land you in jail …

Back to less morbid topics: like so many other high tech observers, the impending CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas has prompted me to take a guess at what – or who – will turn out to be 2103's most important development. One name that isn't on the list: Microsoft.

CES isn't just an endless series of booths manned by barkers and BS artists where companies peddle their latest vacuum tube audio gear and touchscreen laptops, it's also the venue for a conference with a series of keynote speeches. During the Golden Age of the PC, Bill Gates was the obligatory headliner on the eve of the trade show.

Gates's keynote was an opportunity for the head of the world's most important software company to describe (and prescribe) the future according to Microsoft.

When he ceded the CEO title, Gates also passed the keynote baton to Steve Ballmer who continued the propaganda, although with progressively diminishing success. Last year's keynote was widely trashed by the press (see here, here or here)

"Microsoft CEO crashes and burns in final CES keynote."

"At CES, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer Strains For Relevance"

There will be no keynote address from Ballmer or any other Microsoft representative at this year's CES.

The baton has indeed been passed, but to whom?

The ascendancy will be decided in a fight between Google and Samsung – and that could turn out to be the most important 2013 development.

Samsung is, by far, the biggest promoter and the best advertisement for the Android platform. Not only does the Korean giant dominate the Android market in unit volume – about half if we believe the company's necessarily imprecise numbers – it also sets the standard for quality with handsets such as the Galaxy S III. And when you consider the huge amount of money Samsung has spent promoting their devices (about $13bn – see Horace Dediu's chart, below, from yet another of illuminating posts, The Cost of Selling Galaxies), you would think that the two companies would be close allies.