The foldable phone can’t come soon enough for Samsung
Samsung just released its earnings guidance for the second quarter of 2018. The exact numbers could change slightly when the final results come out later this month, but the company expects profits of 14.8 trillion won (about $13.2 billion). This is down from 15.64 trillion won (about $14 billion) in the last quarter. This ends a run of four consecutive record-breaking quarters.
Much of the recent run of profits have been down to the company’s strong memory chip sales. This has covered up what can only be called a slump in sales of its recent flagship smartphones. According to an analyst cited in The Wall Street Journal, Samsung is expected to sell around 31 million Galaxy S9 devices in 2018. This is a huge drop from the 50 million Galaxy S7 phones that Samsung reportedly sold just two years ago.
While any company making that kind of profit is unlikely to be truly desperate for anything, Samsung must be concerned about the downward sales trends of its flagships.
There are many potential reasons for the reduction in sales, with a slowing smartphone market and increasing competition being two of them. However, it’s hard to look at the similarities between Samsung’s recent devices and not think that this could also be affecting sales.
The Galaxy S9 is a great phone, but…
While the Galaxy S9 is a great phone, it looks almost exactly the same as the Galaxy S8. There are slight improvements on the S9, of course: the camera has dual-aperture, it has a newer Snapdragon or Exynos processor, and Samsung made some software additions such as AR Emoji. However, the S8 and S9 are undoubtedly very similar devices.
With the upcoming Galaxy Note 9, Samsung will once again be going for slight improvements. While nothing about the Galaxy Note 9 has been officially confirmed, all the leaks and rumors we have seen so far points to a device that looks almost exactly the same as the Galaxy Note 8.
Considering the Galaxy Note 8 looks almost the same as the Galaxy S8 Plus and, therefore, the Galaxy S9 Plus, it’s looking like Samsung may be about to release its fourth device in a row with basically the same design. The anticipated larger battery, potential for a version with more RAM and storage, and some fancy new S Pen features are unlikely to be enough to have consumers rushing to the shops to upgrade.
The similarity between Samsung’s recent phones becomes even more apparent when you look at what some other manufacturers have come up with recently. We have seen phones with triple cameras, the notch trend, gaming phones, in-display fingerprint sensors, devices with two screens and, most recently, more than 90 percent screen-to-body ratios.
While I’m not saying Samsung should have used any of these ideas specifically, it does suggest that it could have done more. Luckily for Samsung, however, it appears to have a huge trick up its sleeve.
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