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Samsung Plans To Overhaul Its Smartphone Strategy at the Mid-range Price Point (cnbc.com)
Samsung Electronics plans to overhaul its smartphone strategy at the mid-range price point in order to appeal more to millennials, the company's mobile CEO has told CNBC. From the report: DJ Koh said the South Korean giant is changing its smartphone strategy for its mid-priced Galaxy A series of smartphones amid a slowdown in the handset market. Instead of introducing new technology into the flagship Galaxy S and Note series of devices, Koh said Samsung will look to bring in cutting-edge features to its cheaper models first. The first of these devices will come later this year. "In the past, I brought the new technology and differentiation to the flagship model and then moved to the mid-end. But I have changed my strategy from this year to bring technology and differentiation points starting from the mid-end," Koh told CNBC in an exclusive interview last week. The move comes amid a global smartphone slowdown with Samsung feeling a bit of the pressure. Sales in its mobile division fell 20 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2018 with the company attributing it to lower-than-expected sales of its high-end Galaxy S9 device.
Never mind the features, just dump the bloat and unlock the boot loader.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Until they get something actually halfway secure and longer term supported than "Musky Minge" or whatever the latest hardware-and-vendor-locked-in flavor is, they might as well just sell malware packages and fuck off the phone hardware.
You can suck it on a thousand dollar cell phone. When it comes time to purchase again I'll start with other brands.
Just don't. It will be sold (as in, buy 1 get 1 and sign up for a year, OR TWO!) to those that don't know the difference, by telcos that don't want you to know the difference.
Going over $1000 USD for a smartphone is just insane.
The things aren't even different in any notorious way from last year's version. Same screen size, shape, storage, etc.
And I don't care if the thing can track how many calories I ate just by taking a selfie while eating or tell some wisecracking jokes while doing web searches. Those new "features" aren't worth going $1000 damn dollars.
The S9 is the same as the S8, maybe they could have called it S8.1 or S8 (2018).
Do people buy the S8? Identical phone, about 400 EUR cheaper.
Ever larger phablets.
Ever thinner phablets.
Ever more fragile phablets.
DON'T WANT !
4.5" screen, thick, sturdy, rubber padding, big battery.
WANT. CANNOT BUY !
Smart phones have are getting into the "good enough" stage where they do everything people want them to do, so customers are feeling feel less and less incentive to spend money on an upgrade. Even worse, the "upgrades" increasingly add little more than stupid novelty features that nobody really wants.
The same thing happened with PCs, laptops and tablets. Smart phones are just the latest ones going down the same path..
I bought a Moto G5 Plus for $200 to replace my broken Galaxy phone, and let me tell you: I will never spend more than $400 on a new phone. G5 Plus is a solid midrange phone with good specs and little bloat. Best that Samsung.
I just bought a last years model Motorola Z2 Force ( https://www.motorola.com/us/pr... ) for $120 from Sprint. This is Mororola's flagship from last year.
Now granted the Z series isn't as great as Samsung's or Apple's flagships but it's not a bad phone by a long shot and isn't that far off. The only reason I can see for most people to be paying the current prices for the latest and greatest flagships is tech nerd status which I could care less about. I feel like Samsung is wising up here and realize they can't offer anything new that matters all that much and is reorienting itself for what I feel like is the market to come.
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... if you charge less, you can sell more?? Get out!
We are not idiots, Samsung. Stop gluing wear items such as batteries into our phones.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Really? Scoff.
How many users are really going to take advantage of the slightly greater speeds those phones provide? I just bought last year's model top tier Motorola for $120 ( see for comments on value of purchase https://mobile.slashdot.org/st... ) . These new thousand dollar phones are offering increased values in exactly the opposite places the average user needs.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm a power user when it comes to PCs because I play games but unless you're big on mobile gaming or have some super niche, power hungry use for your phone there's very little extra value in these top tier phones. Four of Five years from now you'll be wanting to buy a new phone whether you buys a sub $300 phone or a $1,000 one.
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Samsung Galaxy Note 9 in Australia is now:
$1499 AUD RRP for the base model $1799 AUD for the 8GB / 512GB model.
That's $1079 US / $ 1294 US
The base iphone X is $1579 AUD and upgraded is $1829 AUD
That's $1136 USD / $1316 USD.
(Admittedly unlike ridiculous America, we DO include taxes in our list prices, no counter shock, ever. Thank goodness)
Back when I first got into smartphones, the premium level Samsung was about $700 to $900 AUD, that's $650 US which is a lot of money, but if you've got a job, love your gadgets, that's not too bad.
Now, admittedly, I do have to wonder if some of these increases don't tie back to inflation in general (ever since 2008 / 2009 a LOT of money printing has occurred world wide) but I can't be sure.
If my wages had gone up on the same trajectory as phones, I probably would have no issue, dropping nearly $2000 on a premium toy that I love to play with. However, wages have */virtually been unchanged at all/*in the last decade, at least in my country.
Interestingly, some companies do appear able to offer fairly close to top of the line phones at semi-reasonable pricing (down in the $1100 for flagship models) like One Plus etc. It's still gone up, but it's not $1800.
A properly constructed 835 chip, 4-6 gig of ram, 64 or 128 gig of storage, OLED, 10-12mp camera with OIS is good enough for probably 99% of users. Take off the stupid flashy color garbage along with the glass backs, stick a 4,000mAH battery inside, price it for less than $400 and clean up.
Phone makers don't want to sell phones that last because they want to sell you another phone next year. So we get thin (fragile) phones with non-replaceable batteries that deteriorate greatly in a year or two, connectors that get irreparably damaged, changing accessory specs/connectors.
Someone will disrupt that eventually. A thicker phone enables a better camera (bigger aperture) - which is now about the only distinguishing advantage to flagship phones, with the added advantage of longer battery life some mid range handset makers might just make the jump and take market share.
Apple and Samsung have done so much to push up the price of a new phone that now the mid-range phone - which is hard to find at retail anywhere - costs more than the flagship phones cost not many years ago. The mid-range phone exists mostly on paper, to encourage people to go out and buy the flagship phones. Good luck finding a Samsung other than a Galaxy S8 (or newer) in any store near you. You'll never find accessories for anything else from them in a retailer either.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
High-end & low-end. Never heard of mid-end. Must be the Moral Panic Premium Edition range.
Bring back IR emitters.
Bring back removable batteries.
Keep SD card slots.
Keep 3.5mm headphone jack.
Get rid of rounded edge displays. They're pointless and any gimmicky effect is thwarted by cases.
Get rid of the notch.
Forget about edgeless displays.
Don't lock bootloaders, or at least provide a means for any owner to unlock the bootloader at no charge.
Keep the physical home button.
Knock it off with Knox.
Otherwise, they would not be Samsung devices. Samsung, a company on fire, hell-bent on singeing the competition and rekindling the market. I am already burning with anticipation.
It really doesn't matter if you want to hold onto your phone or not, the carriers will continue to force them on you. I sadly have a iPhone 6 because my texts kept on coming out of order on the Android phones that I was using. Now while I have no plans on spending $700+ for a new phone T-Mobile is forcing me to buy a new phone because they are moving to Band 12 which my phone doesn't have. My phone has become unusable in my home to where I need Wifi to send and receive calls.
Two years? The technology isn't moving that fast anymore.
I kind of agree; my wife for example has had her phone for about three years now, will probably hold out a year or two longer.
I myself am waiting two, but honestly the I wouldn't do so that often if not for two factors:
1) Camera improves enough over that time I find value in an upgrade.
2) I do mobile development and so need relatively new models to test with.
Other than that just speed and feature improvements across the board would probably move me to wait no longer than three, two does seem pretty good and is also about the length of a contract most people use that gives them phone upgrades.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'd like them to be OLED. I recently decided upon the affordable Galaxy J7 V 2nd Gen since I'm not a heavy mobile user. When I got to the store I realized that it wasn't OLED and changed my mind.
Kriston
Looked on the Samsung website, and the A series doesn't look listed for USA.
I have a newer J7 and it works pretty well, but I want something that has more features for my next phone.