Recently, my colleague Ian Mckee wrote a blog post on why being an Apple fan is like being a Chelsea fan. Being an iPhone owner and Chelsea fan myself, I particularly enjoyed it, but it also got me thinking about how being a Samsung fan is probably like being a Manchester United fan. I’m in no place to comment since the last Samsung device I owned was a Samsung A800 in 2004 and I take pleasure in all Manchester United suffering, but here goes anyway…

Both are the most popular in the world in their respective fields

Last year, Samsung topped the global smartphone market share figures with 23.7% — a whole 12 percentage points more than Apple in second place. And according to research by Kantar, Manchester United purportedly have 659m fans worldwide (pfff, yeah right), which is a heck of a lot more than any other club.

Both have a huge following in South Korea

Although Apple is catching up, Samsung is still the dominant player in South Korea — its home country — with 46% market share. Comparing that to football, around 59% of South Korea’s population claim to be Man Utd fans, largely thanks to the influence that Park Ji-Sung had at the club, while he was there.

Both have worked considerably on improving speed

If you have a look at recent signings, United have brought in some serious pace with Ángel Di Maria — and Falcao’s not slow either. These two players join Wayne Rooney and the world’s fastest footballer Antonio Valencia (who knew!).

Manchester United probably aren’t as quick as Chelsea, who have Hazard, Oscar and Willian at their disposal, in a similar way that Samsung isn’t as quick as Apple, as independent tests show. But like United, Samsung has worked hard on upgrading its Snapdragon processor from 1.9GHz in the Galaxy S4 to 2.5GHz in the Galaxy S5.

Both invest in home-grown structures

According to Forbes, 97% of mobile malware is on Android, and Samsung is doing everything it can to combat the threat of attack. The company is developing its own operating system called Tizen to provide an alternative to Android — and while the OS is still young, Samsung can mould it exactly to its liking, and we could see it feature on flagship Samsung phones in the future.

Much in the same way that Samsung is developing its own OS, Sir Alex Ferguson enjoyed developing talent in the youth academy before bringing players into the senior squad. We’re now seeing the likes of Tyler Blackett and Paddy McNair break into the XI and they have a bright future ahead if they continue to work hard. Sir Alex had the ability to mould these two exactly to his liking — and now they provide a much cheaper alternative to shoring up Utd’s defence than bringing in players from other clubs.

I know Ian came up with eight reasons, but I think these four reasons are still pretty valid. Now to await the barrage of abuse that’s inevitably going to come my way…

photo credit: CL: ManUnited vs. Bayern