I bet reading the title would have made your mind wander to the ‘Milky Way’ galaxy in which our planet Earth is a tiny part. Well, let me bring you back. I’m talking about the ‘Galaxy’ range of smartphones and how Samsung’s marketing and operations teams worked together cohesively to generate mind-blowing revenue for the company.
It all started when Samsung announced the ‘Galaxy S II’ smartphone at the ‘Mobile World Congress’ in Barcelona in February 2011. Samsung stated that the smartphone would be launched in world markets from its homeland in April and yes, true to his word. , the ‘Galaxy S II’ has been launched in almost all major world markets to date and has been a resounding success everywhere.
Almost all of you know that the smartphone has fearsome specs and has earned the approval and praise of almost every tech enthusiast in the world. But if you look at the whole ‘Galaxy S II’ exercise from a business point of view, you will get to know the reality.
Please understand that there are two more prevalent technologies in today’s market: GSM and CDMA. While the GSM versions of the phones work on different carriers just by changing the SIM card, the CDMA versions are locked to a specific carrier. Samsung originally released the ‘Galaxy S II’ with the model number GT-I9100 running the ‘Android’ operating system, a GSM version. On May 9, 2011, they announced that they had received 3 million pre-orders for the smartphone.
Samsung was quick to foresee that it could not meet the huge pent-up demand from all markets. There is a very good reason for this. The ‘Galaxy S II’ uses two important components manufactured by Samsung itself. The ‘Super AMOLED plus’ screen is manufactured by Samsung and the SoC (System on Chip) i.e. Exynos 4210 is also manufactured by Samsung. So, Samsung had turned to Nvidia for help. It released a Tegra-2 (GT-I9103) powered version of the ‘Galaxy S II’ and called it ‘Galaxy R’, also called ‘Galaxy Z’ in Sweden. This European version of the ‘Galaxy S II’ did not get a ‘Super AMOLED plus’ display and instead settled for a ‘SC-LCD’ display and a 5-megapixel scaled-down camera instead of the 8-megapixel camera that came with the original. But it was also priced lower compared to the ‘Galaxy S II’ GT-I9100 version.
To compete well in the lower priced smartphone section, Samsung released another version called ‘Samsung Galaxy W’. This doesn’t have a dual-core processor, but instead settles for a 1.4GHz single-core Qualcomm processor with a ‘SC-LCD’ display and a 5-megapixel camera. It was also priced lower compared to the original ‘Galaxy S II’ version in order to compete well.
In many of the world markets, 4G technologies had already been implemented and Samsung saw an opportunity there as well. The ‘Galaxy S II’ originally released did not have LTE (Long Term Evolution – 4G Technology) built in. So Samsung released a variant of the ‘Galaxy S II’ called ‘Galaxy S II LTE’ and ‘Galaxy S II HD LTE’ on August 28, 2011. While the ‘Galaxy S II LTE’ has a 4.5 Super AMOLED display. inches, the ‘Galaxy S II HD LTE’ sported a 4.65-inch Super AMOLED 720p display.
Samsung saved the Canadian and US markets for last. In the United States, operators (service providers) link up with mobile phone companies and sell CDMA versions at subsidized rates. Normally the contracts have a duration of 2 years after which the user acquires the ownership of the phone. Samsung partnered with carriers ‘Sprint’, ‘T-Mobile’ and ‘AT&T’ and offered ‘SPH D710’, ‘SGH T989’ and ‘SGH I777’ respectively. These are all variants of the ‘Galaxy S II’ smartphone. The ‘T-Mobile’ version was released with a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm processor instead of the Exynos CPU, as the Exynos CPU was not compatible with T-Mobile’s network. There are other differences between the models but they are minor. Samsung was able to bring the entire ‘United States of America’ under its purview with this launch strategy. Currently, Samsung is also selling the ‘Galaxy S II Skyrocket’ for ‘AT&T’ (SGH-I727), which is an improvement over the original version originally obtained by the carrier. Similar to the strategy followed in the US, Samsung also connected with operators such as ‘Rogers’, ‘Bell’ and ‘Telus’ to cover the Canadian market. Samsung also released a ‘Galaxy S II’ powered by ‘Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 SoC’, which most people believe could be due to a deficiency of the ‘Exynos 4210’ SoCs. The ‘OMAP 4430’ chip offers relatively similar performance compared to the ‘Exynos 4210’ chip.
The point to note is that Samsung has managed to successfully penetrate all major world markets with the myriad of variants of the ‘Galaxy S II’ smartphone without greatly compromising any of the original features that had made the phone so popular. device. If we consider the BCG matrix, when the ‘Galaxy S II’ was released in April it was a ‘STAR’ and now it has become a ‘CASH COW’ that Samsung is looking to milk. This also reaffirms the relevance of a popular proverb: “Make hay while the sun is shining.”
As we approach the end of another eventful year, one of Samsung’s representatives has said that the world will witness the successor to the ‘Galaxy S II’ which, as you may have already guessed, is the Galaxy S III ‘(for will be launched at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2012). Samsung surely had a lot of fun with the ‘Galaxy S II’ this year. Hopefully it will work again with the ‘Galaxy S III’.
Stay tuned .. !!