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Steve Jobs

Samsung success secret: Fast work gives customers just what they want!

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By Noel Young, Correspondent

May 30, 2013 | 3 min read

On June 20 in London Samsung will be showing off some new stuff. One item will likely be the Galaxy S4 Mini, a slightly smaller version of the company’s flagship smartphone.

GALAXY S3: Smaller version was out in months!

A miniature version of the S4 will be sold in the U.S. as well.

The Mini’s an interesting example of how Samsung works, says Bloomberg Business Week.

When the Galaxy S3 came out in May last year, it wasn’t clear that the phone’s considerably larger display would be a hit.

“Our research showed that some customers, particularly some female customers, found the phone to be too large,” says Samsung Mobile marketing chief D.J. Lee.

Amazingly, in just five months, Samsung brought to market a smaller version of the same phone .

There are two things about that story, says Bloomberg. First, Samsung pays very close attention to what its customers are saying.

Second, it took only around five months to create the S3 Mini. "Samsung may be the only tech company capable of this kind of rapid deployment".

Bloomberg harks back to the famous Steve Jobs quote, “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them . . .by the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”

If you’re Samsung, you can identify what people want and get it to them in a matter of months.

Bloomberg concludes, "If your research is good enough, and your manufacturing operation is fast enough, you may be able to circumvent Jobs’s paradox.

"Industrially speaking, Samsung is quickly becoming the first manufacturer to operate in real time."

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