Aims to attract buyers with premium materials across mobile portfolio
Samsung has stated it intends to attract buyers for its mobile devices through the use of more premium end materials across its range, in a bid to win back marketshare following the lead taken by Apple last December.
The company will create smartphones in all areas of its portfolio with metal casings, HD displays and slim, attractive designs, stated co-chief executive officer at Samsung, Shin Jong Kyun, at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Seoul, Korea, last Friday reported Bloomberg.
Samsung lost the number one smartphone sales spot to Apple in the global smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2014, a position that Samsung had held since 2011. The manufacturer’s unit sales of smartphones in the fourth quarter of last year dropped to 73,032, 19.9% of global marketshare, from 83,317 which represented 29.5% of the global market in the same period one year previously, according to research firm, Gartner.
However, over the course of the entire year Samsung still dominated Apple, even though that share has dropped from its 2013 figures. Samsung had 307,597 smartphone sales to end users in 2014, representing 24.7%, compared to 299,795 or 30.9% marketshare in 2013.
Apple made it to sales of 191,426 units in 2014, up significantly from 150,786 in 2013. Yet its marketshare dropped from 15.5% in 2013 to 15.4% in 2014.
Yet since the unveiling of Samsung’s new Galaxy S6 and S6 edge smartphones at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week, expectations for the company’s performance has rallied with the belief the company will be able to revive sales and gain back the marketshare lost to Apple.
Smart Chimps reported at the announcement of the new devices in Barcelona that JK Shin, president and CEO at Samsung Electronics, commented: “…People want best in class smartphones with best in class design and that’s what we have built, from the ground up.”
On the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, Shin said: “These are the most advanced smartphones in the world. No other smartphones can match them, and to coin an engineering term, they are also really cool.”
The Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge will be available in 20 countries globally starting from 10 April, 2015.
