Samsung is coming for having the top-selling Android smartphones for the last 3 years with it’s line of Galaxy S devices. The Galaxy S II was a huge success, the Galaxy S III was even bigger and this year, the Galaxy S IV is selling like hotcakes worldwide, with Samsung shipping 20 million devices (we don’t know how many of those are actually sold) and estimates of reaching almost 100 million units sold. When Samsung reported how many Galaxy S IV has shipped, some analysts started predicting a sales slowdown and now, a report of an internal crisis at Samsung has surfaced by an employee who shall remain anonymous.
We don’t know exactly how shipping 20 million devices is a crisis, but Korean news site ETNews is reporting that apparently it has to do with the sales not being as high as Samsung internally expected before the slowdown began. The Samsung employee is saying that Samsung was expecting bigger sales in the US market, which is apparently over saturated with other devices including Samsung’s own Galaxy Note II and Galaxy S III, which is still being sold.
How can Samsung fight this to get more sales in the US and the rest of the world? Apparently, they’re planning to be even more Samsung than what they’ve been so far. Most companies launch a flagship device with some mid-range companions, then release a few new models throughout the year but keep the flagship intact, we’ve seen it last year with HTC and the One X, who remained the company’s only flagship for 2012 and they’ve done the same this year with the HTC One. Samsung on the other hand, had a shotgun approach to the market for the last few years, that is, launch everything everywhere and see what sticks. They had great success with the Note line, but they’ve also released hundreds of devices that gone unnoticed.
That’s about to become worse than before, with Samsung thinking in “maximize the market share with a number of small hit models, not one single mega hit model.” So instead of fewer devices like every other company, or even Samsung itself, who released fewer phones than other years, they’re going to create every possible combination of hardware instead of having a single flagship device.
We’ve already seen Samsung begin with this trend with the Galaxy S IV, launching the Mini, Active and Zoom variations, and even if the Mini is not in the same range as the others, you might argue that those 4 create the Galaxy S IV flagship that Samsung wants.
The Galaxy S V might not even be the flagship everyone expects, but more of a line of similar devices with variations for different tastes. We might see the evolution of the current line up, or even something stranger. With Samsung you never know.