A few weeks back we expected the Samsung Galaxy S4 to sell more than 10 million handsets. The Samsung Electronics co-CEO Shin Jong-kyun told reporters that it would happen last month but according to analysts this hasn’t happened.
Shares dipped on Friday after J.P. Morgan analysts advised that the Galaxy S4 could “disappoint” investors..
Our supply chain checks show monthly orders have been cut 20%-30% to 7 to 8 million units (from 10 million) starting July.
We’d like to hear it from Samsung direct, but alas we’ve not heard any official figures on S4 sales recently. Even if these reduced figures are true, these are still big numbers. However, many will compare this against the iPhone 5, which sold some 8 million handsets every month, and WWDC is kicking off now…
The Wall Street Journal reports that ..
The J.P. Morgan report caught many investors by surprise, leading to a bout of foreign selling in Samsung shares.
funny sure i told you this when you wanted to tell us all Samsung had shipped not sold 10 million phones….
for me its not a big leap from the S3 as that was a good phone… not sure we will see another greet leap in tech for a few years now..
I’ve heard quite a few people say that we won’t see any great leap in tech for the next few years, or phrases of a similar ilk. Based on what, exactly?
I think that people are feeling this because neither of the market leaders (Samsung and Apple) have brought any significant advances to the table in recent months. The competition, however, have been pretty busy and I see no sign of that slowing. Also, both Apple and Samsung must realise that they absolutely must innovate at a greater rate just to keep their over-inflated share prices from freefall.
So I argue that the opposite is the case. Competition is hotting up, more innovative features are being seen, and the big two must innovate just to hold market position. For me and a great many others, both the iPhone 5 and the S4 were a bit ‘meh’. Sure, they had incremental improvements, and they are still highly desirable devices in their own rights, but there’s hardly anything about them which makes me want to throw my SGS3 (or even 2 for that matter, or iPhone 4/4S) in the dustbin and immediately upgrade.
In fact, I’m far more likely to do that for one of the competing devices (HTC, Sony, etc), because they actually offer new and exciting features, rather than a slightly more powerful CPU, etc. That plus some of the new devices coming along look and feel a bit different, maybe even higher quality. They have a bit of ‘ooh’ factor to them. You’d be hard pressed to notice if somebody was running an S2 or an S4, especially if they were using a case.
Quite honestly, there’s a whole host of new exciting developments in the pipeline, and it’s a matter of which manufacturer gets there first. I happen to know for a fact that we’re going to see some new battery technology within the next two years, and I’d be very interested to see who gets there first.
I know if Apple were to release a new phone this week which had twice the battery capacity which could be charged in half the time, they’d see sales absolutely boom. It’s not like there’s even the remotest sign that the big phone manufacturers are slowing, or the smartphone market is shrinking… I really don’t know how folks draw these conclusions.
Simply answer put the top four side by side they all look the same ….. Where is the great leap over the past years…..
Why would accompany give you all the goodies at once ?
By that measure you could say smartphones haven’t really changed since their inception. Within the last three years we’ve seen many different form factors appear, it’s just that the iPhone, the galaxy S4 and the like are most popular, and therefore get most attention. It is positively ignorant to disregard the massive choice available to the consumer and the massive leaps that have been made over the last couple of years.
Chances are that until the technology matures, we won’t see a significant change, but that always takes a long time. For example, I can’t see Google glass being a particularly practical device until we see a huge jump in battery technology.
You are absolutely correct. My 2 year contract with an S2 is up, but I am still very happy with it and can’t see any reason to get the S4. Better battery life on any phone would get my attention.