Samsung wants to sell more foldable phones in Europe
Samsung would like to sell more foldable phones in Europe. Where the brand in South Korea sees that foldable sales are about the same as sales of regular smartphones, Europe seems to have to develop something in this. The plan is to have this straightened out by 2025.
The winner of the future
In a roundtable session with TM Roh, the head of Samsung’s mobile branch, the CEO explained Samsung’s plans in more detail. He sees that there is a lot of economic uncertainty and that challenges are coming that affect everyone. He says: “How we deal with those challenges and how we prepare for the future is what determines who is a winner in the future.” He said Samsung Unpacked was one of the ways it showed how Samsung is addressing those challenges, by empowering users’ fundamental experiences and showing them that they can build on Samsung. That is especially important now, says Roh. “Especially in the camera area, we innovate a lot. Our signature with Galaxy S23 Ultra is the ‘nightography’: through this capability, we can enhance our video experience to the point where it is now good enough to experience feature films.”
When asked about the competition with Apple, Roh declined to comment, but said this: “What other companies do doesn’t affect our strategy or the path we take. We keep doing what we always do. We are strengthening our communication with customers and aiming for a better mobile experience to get the most value from our products.
Smartphone market is saturated
He was also asked about the amount of pressure Samsung must feel in a smartphone world that is so saturated. “It is in our DNA to innovate and we are always looking for meaningful innovation. I wouldn’t call it pressure, it’s part of what we do, it’s our mission. When we talk about innovation, it certainly doesn’t always have to be the ‘wow’ factors, it’s also in smaller things. For example, we are looking at other form factors: of course we have foldable phones, but we are investigating what else is possible.”
Innovating means inventing things yourself. Would Samsung consider making self-designed chips? “Our processor strategy for the premium lineup is very clear. We look at what the best solution is at that time and we look at it again and again when a new gadget is in the making.” In any case, Samsung will mainly look at how it sells more foldables in the coming years as far as Europe is concerned because that number is somewhat behind compared to the Galaxy series. How exactly it wants to do that, Roh did not make any statements about that. We do see, for example, that Samsung uses the foldables very widely. Samsung had a stand at Dutch Comic -Con with extra attention to the Z Flip 4 and the above promotion at a high-end fair in the Netherlands with an exclusive variant of the foldable phone.
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Roh received a very diverse number of questions from journalists, so he kept it somewhat general. But it is interesting to hear that Samsung would rather see more balance in our part of the world in terms of foldable devices and normal flat ‘open’ phones.
