What are they actually trying to sell here?

You may or may not know this, but the world is in the middle of two major wars. What are they? The war in Afghanistan? The war in Syria? The war against terror? No. In Star Wars, we had the Clone Wars, but in our galaxy, we have the:

The Phone Wars

The Tablet Wars

This war is fought not on the battlefields of Europe or Asia. South America or the Middle East. It's fought in the media and they are trying to win our hearts, minds, and pocketbooks.

Who are the factions? While there are many globally, here in the United States, the last Super Power in the world, they are Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft.

You may ask, what about BlackBerry (formerly Research in Motion)? Well to be honest, BlackBerry is like Canada. No one really cares about them. They will just listen to whoever is in charge.

One of the mediums you will see this battle played out on a daily basis is on our televisions. If you don't have TIVO and don't DVR everything you watch, you will eventually see a commercial or two with these competitors trying to convince you that you should buy their product.

However, how these companies go about trying to convince you is what is most surprising. Let's take a look how each company does it:

SAMSUNG
First up is Samsung since they are the global leader in 'market share' in smartphones.

Here is the most well known commercial for the Galaxy S3:

So in this commercial they spend almost 1/2 the time making fun of customers they are trying to convince to switch to their product. If there is one thing you can count on, it's that a loyal customer of an Apple product would find this commercial offensive and almost denegrating. There is a reason for those long lines and that's because of its popularity and functionality.

Here is a commercial for their Galaxy Tab 10.1:

Here is an example of a commercial where they sprinkle in the uses and features of the product, but they clutter it with a lot of what I call clutter and 'noise'. Can't you just show the product and features without trying to distract us from what it actually does?

While these two commercials are not representative of all of Samsung's commercials, there is an underlying theme. I will say that while researching their commercials, there were some that showed more features of their products, but in the end, they all had some story to tell and you're almost drawn into that than finding out what their product actually does for you.

MICROSOFT

Microsoft is the biggest abuser of trying to hide the fact that their phones and tablets aren't what they claim to be. Here are a few smartphone examples:

Once again, a high production value commercial where they take you to many different locations and what do they show you? A person holding up a phone and showing you the screen, but what does it actually do? What are the features? Granted, Microsoft is dependent on other manufacturers for building the hardware (think Nokia Lumia), but seriously? Just show me what the phone actually does.

Here's another one that shows a high production value, but what does the phone do?

However, their biggest and most confusing commercials are reserved for the tablets, the Microsoft Surface:

     

I've seen these commercials more times than I can count and I still don't know exactly what they are trying to sell here. Something that clicks? The removable keyboards? A trailer to the sequel to 'Step Up' or 'Stomp the Yard'? The new season of 'So You Think You Can Dance?' Utterly confusing!

APPLE

Finally, we have Apple. While they did have commercials during the late 90's and early 2000's with the PC and Mac guy, their commercials as of late are simplistic and to the point. While they do have some high production commercials like the latest one touting that more people take photos with iPhones, a lot of them look like these:

This one looks similar to Samsung's Galaxy Tab commercial, but the big difference? Other than a few instances where in the Samsung commercial where they show instances of use of someone playing a game, this one actually shows people using the feature where they take actual photos and use the panorama functionality. They also have a person editing a photo after it was taken. It shows functionality in how a person would use it in real life.

Another commercial where it simply shows you how the phone functions. Simple and clean.

Finally we have a few iPad and iPad mini commercials:

So there you go. A few Apple commercials that don't show a lot of clutter and noise. Shows you the products and what they actually do.

While I will admit that I am an Apple fanboy and loyal to their products, it's up to you to make up your mind.

As for who's winning this war, only time will tell. Do you win with market share as is Samsung is doing? Or do you win with the most profit made as Apple is doing (with over 70% in profit made on phones)? Microsoft is clearly losing and I don't think I've ever seen anyone actually use a Surface out in the wild.

So good luck to those companies. You know who I am rooting for!