Samsung makes a big splash every year with their top two phones from the S and Note series. However, these are generally expensive and not in everyone’s price range. Many consumers turn to midrange phones looking for a good compromise on specs and price.
While Samsung offers a variety of midrange phones they are feeling the pressure from Chinese brands as they increase their sales each year. Companies such as Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi often offer better bargains in the midrange and are gaining large market shares in India and China.
That’s bad news for Samsung as they observe their sales numbers weaken, watching as phone sales become stagnant in the rest of the world. Most notably, the Galaxy S9 sales have shown a 20% decline over the Galaxy S8.
Now, Samsung is looking to catch up, or as they put it differentiate their midrange models. Beginning as early as this year Samsung is planning on making a shift to include new features in their midrange Galaxy A series before flagships.
DJ Koh, president of Samsung’s mobile department had this to say in an interview with CNBC, “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.”
What features could these be? Will it be hardware specific or software features? Samsung hasn’t said, they’ve only mentioned the first of these devices will come by the end of the year. Samsung hopes this will draw in the millennial crowd who have been unable to afford their flagships but want more full-featured phones.
To quote Koh he said, “So we are very much focusing on millennials who cannot afford the flagship. But how can I deliver meaningful innovation to our millennials? That’s the reason I’m trying to differentiate the mid-section.”
It has been my belief after reviewing some lower end phones from Samsung that they often lag behind the competition in specs or features. Hopefully, with this new strategy, they can put an end to this.