The real mobile show will begin in a couple of weeks at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It’s the biggest mobile show of the year, and it’s where virtually all manufacturers show their upcoming phones. Some of them get launched 2 months later, while for others it may take as long as 6 months, while some may even get scrapped by the time they are supposed to launch on the market.
According to Pocket-lint Samsung will have a booth at MWC, but they won’t hold any conference like they did at CES (where they mostly showed their TV’s). But if MWC is so important for mobile manufacturers, why isn’t Samsung going to hold a conference there, especially when there have even been some rumors that Samsung would launch the Galaxy S4 there?
Personally, I’ve never believed those rumors, because that’s not how Samsung thinks anymore, and how they think now about the mobile market is exactly why they won’t even have a conference at MWC anymore. Samsung doesn’t see themselves as just another Android manufacturer anymore. They see themselves as THE Android manufacturer, and as a manufacturer that is as important or more important than Apple. So if Apple isn’t going to participate in these multi-manufacturer shows, then Samsung will not do it either, because they think of themselves as part of a different class above the other manufacturers.
So from now on I’d only expect Samsung to hold their own big events, at least for their most important devices of the year, and they’ll leave only the less important ones to such multi-manufacturer events. Devices such as the Galaxy S4 will only be shown at their own event, where they get to invite all the reporters they want. They know everyone will be there, specifically to see what Samsung is announcing next, and it’s much easier to make them excited about their announcements and dominate the news cycle during that day.
Samsung dominates not just the Android market, but the whole smartphone market now, and they are going to act like it. Whether that will be a good thing for us consumers in the future or not, it remains to be seen.