With the iconic Galaxy S3, Samsung truly emerged as the king of Android OEMs. While the follow-up Galaxy S4 continues to sell well, it didn’t quite meet expectations for Samsung. The Korean handset manufacturer sold the most devices last quarter, but they may be re-focussing their efforts in 2014.
According to a report from ETNews, Samsung has opted to re-direct their focus on the growing mid-range market for 2014. Seeing a plateau in sales trends for high-end devices, Samsung is said to make headway into the lower cost device realm. That will have the added benefit of introducing or increasing Samsung’s profile in emerging markets.
Their forecast for 2014 is said to mention they’ll sell 360 million handsets. While impressive, it’s the company’s most modest forecast in regard to year-over-year performance. Those numbers are also said to show that only 35% (about 126 million) of their forecasted smartphone sales will be high-end devices. This could all be in response to those S4 sales numbers, and causing lowered expectations for the upcoming S5. The reception to their Galaxy Round was also cool, perhaps showing that Samsung has saturated the market — and mindshare of customers — with high-end devices.
The benefit is that Samsung has the muscle to make a strong name for themselves while continuing to push out very respectable flagship devices. The S5 is said to offer a metal body with 4GB RAM and an improved camera. If true, that could turn enough heads to beat their sales predictions while allowing Samsung to focus on the mid-range segment they’ve been quietly ignorant of for some time.
VIA: G for Games
