Samsung revamps mobile strategy, will bring new features to mid-range phones before flagships

[Shawn Knight]

Why it matters: Samsung's revised mobile strategy is surprising but in the wake of slowing flagship sales, the company clearly feels that changes are necessary. There are more questions than answers as of now but it'll be extremely interesting to see how this plays out in the coming months.

Flagship smartphone buyers have traditionally been the first to get their hands on a company’s flashy new features but that’ll no longer be the case at Samsung.

In a recent interview with CNBC, Samsung mobile boss DJ Koh said the company is changing its strategy amid a slowdown in the smartphone industry.

“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’s new strategy is to focus on millennials who cannot afford the latest flagship but still want a device packed with meaningful innovation. By differentiating mid-range devices, Koh said, they’ll be able to achieve this goal.

Samsung’s new strategy is interesting, to say the least, and it’s evoking all sorts of scenarios on how it could play out – both good and bad.

Experimenting with potentially gimmicky features on high-end phones is expensive. Letting buyers sort out the truly useful new features from the gimmicks at a more affordable price point seems to make sense yet at the same time, it cannibalizes the high-end market as flagship buyers will have less of an incentive to buy expensive phones. Aside from faster core hardware, they know they aren’t going to get any new or exclusive features and that feels like a mistake.

Also, will Samsung’s new strategy impact the rising price of flagships? Has Samsung come to realize that $1,000+ flagships were a mistake? Will mid-range devices become more expensive? Is Samsung essentially conceding the high-end market to Apple?

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https://www.techspot.com/news/76257-samsung-revamps-mobile-strategy-bring-new-features-mid.html

 

[psycros]

Their not completely handing Apple the high-end market because the Note series exists. From what I've seen the Notes are the only Samsung smartphones worth owning. However, $1000 is absurd unless you live in that strange realm where a fruit logo makes you feel special (and that's a shame, because Apple does deliver a better user experience most of the time). Even $700 is a bit much for the majority of us who use our phones for three main purposes: calling, texting and taking pictures. Scanning of QR codes has also become fairly widespread but its still rather twitchy. I think most people, if they were honest, would say they want three improvements out of mobile: more battery, better reception and more reliable software (this goes double for Samsung). A fair number of us would also put physical QWERTY pretty high on the wish list. I'm amazed by how many millienals ask me where I got my SGS7 keyboard..it may only be hipster-ism at work but it warms my heart nonetheless. The main point here is that anything a typical consumer really needs from a phone can be packed into a $600 device. I know this is true because last year's flagships are typically available for around that price point or below.

 

[amghwk]

$1,000+ for phones is too much. But apple fans still bought the $999 iPhone X in masses.

As long as there are mindless people who keep buying whatever these companies churn out at exorbitant prices, the prices will keep going through the roof.

People forego practicality and logical usabilty for statement of trend and fashion.

 

[misor]

People buy things with their money. we may not like it but let's just have to respect each other's choices.

 

[Danny101]

I paid $250 for my last phone and I still feel like I paid too much. I was paying mostly for the battery. But as 7nm soc's get integrated into newer smartphones and 2g is dropped limiting to 3g/4g/LTE radios, adapting to a lower brightness of the screen then all of these changes should help with battery usage. The high-end should be more game-centric than feature-centric. Shoot, I don't even play games that much anymore. I do everything else though, which doesn't require all that much horsepower. I wish phone makers can developed a more tiered type or feature set models. There's so much added features that I don't use and never will that are just there burning the resources that could be made available to features that I actually do use. If only we could customize our phones in our orders, but I know that's not realistic and would be expensive. But it would be worth the actual price I spend because I'm at least getting exactly what I asked for.