Samsung’s President of the Mobile Communication Business DJ Koh said, Samsung changed its strategy for its middle-class line, Galaxy A, because of the slowing smartphone market growth. He said Samsung will not introduce new technology on their flagship line, Galaxy S or Galaxy Note. Instead, new technology will be included in middle-class smartphones. Samsung will release the middle-class smartphone this year. “In the past, we usually brought new technology to the flagship-class before taking it to the mid-range smartphones. But we changed our strategy this year to bring this new technology features in the middle class first,” Koh said. Samsung seems to be making this decision because they feel that they are starting to be pushed back by the slow growth of the smartphone market. Their mobile division sales fell 20 percent in Q2 2018 compared to the same period last year. Samsung felt the reason for this decline was because sales of Galaxy S9 were not as good as they expected. At the same time, manufacturers from China, such as Huawei, OPPO, Vivo and Xiaomi dare to offer middle-class smartphones at lower prices. This means, Samsung now has stiff competition in the premium Android smartphone market, a market they once dominated. Although the growth of the global smartphone market is slowing down, some markets such as India and Southeast Asia are experiencing growth. However, consumers in the region usually look for smartphones with high specifications and low prices. Koh said, with this new strategy, Samsung hopes they will be able to attract more consumers from the millennial generation. “So we are very focused on millennials who cannot buy flagship-class smartphones. But how can we provide meaningful innovation for our millennial users? This is the reason why we try to introduce a distinguishing feature on our middle-class smartphones,” Koh said.
