Samsung
is holding its first analyst-oriented event in 8 years to quell the
worries about flagship smartphone saturation - its bread and butter
business. Actually, it just threw a pretty big number at analysts and
investors - cumulative sales since the inception of the Galaxy S and
Note lines have surpassed the 100th million handset this year. This includes the first Galaxy S, then the S II, the Note, S III, Note II, and the current Galaxy S4 and Note 3, of course.
Certainly
an impressive achievement, though the overall numbers are less than
what Samsung was forecasting around this time last year. Global
smartphone penetration is after all just 21 %, so Samsung expects the
maturing flagship market to be offset with the exploding low- and
mid-range ones, and is positioning accordingly, with attention paid to
tablets as well. Samsung's boss JK Shin also reminded analysts that
flagship demand will get a boost from the switch to LTE networks as
well, and people will be changing their handsets more often to take
advantage of the faster download speeds. "
By 2017," he mentioned, "
half of all handset demand will be for LTE-equipped ones".
Samsung also hinted what's in the pipeline going forward, with a specific takeaway about its YOUM
brand of flexible displays with plastic substrate. Surprisingly, the
company divides its YOUM panels in "curved", "bended" and... wait for
it... "foldable" ones.
Yep, as you see in the timeline it presented to investors above, the Galaxy Round
is somewhat of a trailblazer for the "curved" concept here, but Samsung
is planning to also introduce phones with "bended" screens next year,
while "foldable" display gear is scheduled to arrive in 2015. There's
one little hurdle between the bendable and foldable sections, though,
that Samsung has marked as "Technology barriers" on the timeline, but we
cross fingers those get overcome in a year or two, and we receive
something akin to Samsung's concept video below.
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