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Samsung to bring innovation and new features to Galaxy A series first, but will it be enough?
- Samsung plans to bring new features and technology to its A series phones in the future.
- DJ Koh said in a recent interview that Samsung is hoping to attract more sales from millennials by offering “meaningful innovation” with its mid-range series.
- Will the change be enough to stave off competition from HUAWEI, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo?
Samsung is reportedly looking to bolster its A series phones with the latest features in a strategic pivot that could see the company challenge the dominance of China’s tech giants in the budget smartphone sector.
In an interview with CNBC, Samsung mobile chief DJ Koh said that future iterations of its mid-range series will feature new technology and “differentiation points” potentially before they make their way to the next wave of Galaxy S and Note phones.
Koh explained that the decision was made to attract more purchases from millenials “who cannot afford the flagship” but still crave “meaningful innovation,” although it seems likely that Samsung has loftier goals in mind for its traditionally uninspiring A series.
Samsung’s Galaxy S9 (and potentially Note 9) sales may not have been as eye watering as the company’s previous flagship phones, but the South Korean firm is still comfortably sat in a prime position at the top of the global market.
For years now, Samsung has launched mid-range phones with unspectacular spec sheets that fail to match their price tags.
Times change, however, and Samsung’s savvy execs won’t have been oblivious to the meteoric rise of HUAWEI and Xiaomi, as well as BBK subsidiaries OPPO and vivo.
China’s breakout OEMs have all benefited from delivering phones with high price-performance ratios — something we’ve recently seen taken to the extreme with Xiaomi’s Snapdragon 845-toting Pocophone F1 — particularly in emergent markets such as India.
By bringing cutting edge tech to a potential Galaxy A8 successor, Samsung would no doubt be hoping to win back some of the market share in Southeast Asia that it has lost to Chinese companies.
There’s just one problem, however: price. For years now, Samsung has launched mid-range phones with unspectacular spec sheets that fail to match their price tags. It’s not hard to see how this would turn off buyers in online-savvy markets where it’s relatively easy to find a much better deal on an objectively superior phone from the likes of HUAWEI, Xiaomi, or even HMD Global’s Nokia family.
Based on Samsung’s usual launch schedule, the next Galaxy A series phones — most likely the Galaxy A9 and A9 Plus — should be unveiled towards the end of the year with a release following in early 2019.
What new features would you like to see added? How about the long-rumored in-display fingerprint sensor that we were meant to see on the Galaxy S9 and later the Note 9 that never materialized? Let us know in the comments.