There’s no doubt that the Galaxy Note 7 ordeal did a lot of damage to Samsung’s Note lineup but the Galaxy brand as a whole may not be as heavily affected as one might think. Namely, Samsung Galaxy is still the most valuable brand in South Korea and the tech giant actually did the only sensible thing it could after discontinuing the Galaxy Note 7 – it ramped up production of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge in hopes that its quarterly won’t take a big hit. Namely, the Note 7 fiasco didn’t just cost Samsung millions of flagships sales in August, September, and October. The holiday season is traditionally one of the most lucrative periods for smartphone makers and with its latest phablet out of the race, Samsung had to make sure retailers are at least stocked with its premium devices released earlier in the year.
As it turns out, that strategy has a good chance of paying off. Namely, retail chains in Taiwan are reporting that most Note 7 customers are opting to replace their devices with the Galaxy S7 Edge. Industry analysts are suspecting that similar sentiments are also present in the West so the Galaxy brand as a whole may still end this year on a high note. In other words, Samsung will likely prove that its phone brand is simply too big to suffer long-term consequence due to a single misstep such as the one made with the Galaxy Note 7. Sure, the launch of this smartphone was pretty much a disaster regardless of how you look at it but the Galaxy Note 7 is still just a single phone and Samsung has already earned enough goodwill from consumers to survive this.
Of course, given how both the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge are cheaper than the company’s explosive flagship, all consumers are still eligible for a partial refund after replacing their faulty phone. In addition to Samsung’s Galaxy S7 smartphones, customers are reportedly also interested in replacing the Galaxy Note 7 with its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy Note 5. No firm sales numbers have been revealed at the moment, but we should know more in a few weeks after market research firms publish their latest findings.