MANILA -- Samsung, the world's largest smartphone maker, sought to arrest plateauing sales with an overhaul of its flagship S line, unveiled globally on Thursday.
The Galaxy S10, S10 Plus and a lower priced S10 E were unveiled in San Francisco, California as Samsung attempted to lure premium consumers from Apple while fighting off competition from Chinese firms, including world number 2, Huawei.
The Galaxy S10 series retained the curved edges and shaved off the top and bottom bezels almost entirely, with the front-facing cameras housed in a tiny cutout.
The S10 Plus has a 6.4-inch screen with a 90-percent screen to body ratio. The S10 has a 6.1-inch panel while the S10 E has a 5.8-inch panel.
The S10 line is the first Samsung phones to ship with an in-display fingerprint sensor. The company said its "ultrasonic" technology will work even with oily and damp fingers.
The S10 and S10 Plus have three rear cameras with wide shooting capability to capture landscapes and group shots. The phones can shoot video in ultra-high definition and HDR 10+. The cheaper S10E has dual rear cameras.
The S10's back, given gradient paint jobs this time, can wirelessly charge other phones and other devices including Samsung's answer to Apple's AirPods. The S10 Plus is powered by a 4,100 mAh cell
The S10 and S10 Plus will come with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, with the option to have 12GB of RAM and 1TB storage in the larger model. The S10E will have 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.
The S10 white will be available in white for all models, black for the S10 and S10 Plus, green for the S10 Plus and Ceramic Black for the 1TB model.
Pre-orders will start on Friday and will run until March 3. The Galaxy S10 phones will be available on March 8.
COOLING SALES
The innovation would be arriving on a global smartphone scene that has cooled as the devices become ubiquitous and buyers put off upgrading from models they own.
"The industry is in flat to declines and we've reached a saturation point of smartphones," said Moor Insights and Strategy principal analyst Patrick Moorhead.
"What Samsung needs to do, no different from Apple, is give people a reason to get rid of a phone that might be perfectly fine for something different."
The argument for a phone that can fold open to provide a larger screen is an easy one - buyers have shown a preference for "more real estate" to watch videos, play games, work, and more.
Samsung was mocked when it introduced large-screen Note phones, only to wind up giving rise to a "phablet" trend that rivals followed.
"I am expecting there to be trade-offs," Moorhead said of a Samsung foldable phone.
"You can't take leading-edge technology and fold it, and have it not be thicker."
Along with perhaps being a bit clunky, a folding phone could come with a lofty price of $1,500 or so, but the point for Samsung is not to sell truckloads of the handsets but to establish a new category to kindle demand in a global market devoid of growth, according to the analyst.
"Samsung always does better when they have something that Apple doesn't have that is valuable to consumers," Moorhead said.
"This is Samsung's opportunity to take some premium market share from Apple."
GOOGLE ON BOARD
Apple has revealed no sign of pursuing folding screens for iPhones. The Cupertino-based company has stressed efforts to ramp up sales of digital content and services to devotees of its devices.
"I do believe Apple will have a foldable screen at some point, but will wait until they perfect the experience," Moorhead said.
Google has made it clear that it is working to adapt its free Android mobile operating system to Samsung's folding screens so video, apps, and more perform as desired when displays change sizes.
The incentive for Samsung and Google goes beyond what is shown off at Unpacked.
While Samsung is the top smartphone maker in the world, the company makes a lot of money selling components such as screens and chips to other consumer electronics companies.
Igniting a folding-screen craze in smartphones would make Samsung a natural prime supplier of such displays.
Android software is the most widely used mobile operating system, giving Google incentive to ride a folding phone wave.
Samsung is opening three US retail stores to promote its Galaxy line of smartphones.
The move ramps up Samsung's efforts to compete on the home turf of Apple, which has hundreds of retail outlets in the US and around the world.
Samsung remained the number one global handset maker with a 20.8 percent share in 2018 despite an eight percent sales slump for the year, according to research firm IDC -- which said last year showed the worst overall decline in sales for the smartphone sector.
Still, analysts don't see the sun setting any time soon on the smartphone era, seen as a must-have device for many people around the world.
"Mobile phones are here to stay," said Gartner analyst Werner Goertz said, while suggesting that consumers may be waiting for radical innovation in handsets.
"Foldable phones would represent a really nice disruptive feature," he said.
GlobalData research director Avi Greengart believes foldable phones will be a big trend this year.
He was among analysts that expected the challenge to folding smartphones to be on the software side, not with the displays, since applications will have to be designed to adapt to going from phone to tablet screen sizes.
-- with a report from Agence France-Presse
source: news.abs-cbn.com
