Ultrafast new Samsung S4 on the way
SAMSUNG Electronics Co plans to sell a variation of its flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone that will transmit data at nearly twice the normal speed, the head of its mobile business said yesterday.
JK Shin, also co-chief executive of the world’s biggest technology firm by revenue, said the phone would be sold in South Korea as early as this month.
Samsung was in talks with several overseas carriers to take the phone, Shin said at Samsung’s headquarters in Suwon, just south of Seoul.
He declined to name the carriers. “We’ll be the first with the commercial launch of the advanced 4G version of the smartphone,” he said.
The new S4 will use LTE-Advanced 4G technology, an upgrade from conventional 4G called long term evolution. LTE-Advanced offers data transmission at up to twice the normal 4G speed. The phones will be powered by Qualcomm chips. A movie download that takes three minutes with conventional 4G will take slightly more than a minute.
Samsung’s shares have lost almost $20-billion (R198-billion) since June 7 after analysts cut forecasts for Galaxy S4 sales by as much as 30% on industry data that showed the high-end smartphone market was becoming saturated. The same problem is hitting sales of the iPhone 5, made by rival Apple Inc.
Samsung’s market capitalisation is still a hefty $195-billion (R1.923-trillion). Its shares closed down 0.2% yesterday.
Shin showed little concern about sales prospects for the S4, which hit stores in late April. The mobile devices division is the company’s biggest profit generator.
“S4 sales remain strong. It’s selling far stronger than the [Galaxy] S III . . . and the new LTE-Advanced [4G] phone will be another addition to our high-end segment offerings that ensure healthy profit margins,” he said.
Shin declined to provide forecasts for S4 sales. He said the new S4 would be slightly more expensive than the current one.
The South Korean firm hopes the addition of hardware offerings such as faster data transmission, along with its widely anticipated move to introduce models with unbreakable or flexible displays, will help it protect margin growth.
“As operators seek to provide more data-centric mobile services, I think this will become mainstream 4G technology globally in the coming years,” Shin said.
Shin also said sales of Samsung’s tablet products in the US market had jumped 3.3 times since it installed brand shops within Best Buy’s stores in April, and is now considering expanding the format in Latin America and Britain. Samsung declined to name potential retailers.
Many countries need to upgrade mobile base stations to handle not just 3G but also 4G, or build them from scratch to support 4G connections. – Reuters