Samsung Galaxy S10 Sales Might Not Reach Expectations. What’s Happening With The Smartphone Industry?

Unsurprisingly there’s a report circulating in South Korea claiming that first day registrations for the Galaxy S10 are lower than expected and lower than the figures posted by Samsung’s Galaxy S9 and Note 9 last year.

The Galaxy S10 managed to get 140 000 registrations whilst the S9 and Note 9 had 180 000 and 200 000 registrations respectively. This slow down is not too surprising as we’ve seen Apple and Samsung slow down YoY figures for a while now.

What’s up with smartphones?

I previously wrote an article that mentioned that innovation in smartphones was truly dead and smartphones have plateaued. At the time I was (and still am) unimpressed by gimmicks such as the notch, sliding cameras and all-screen displays. Though some of these things (or features -if you prefer that word) look cool, they can never be the incentive to get a new phone for millions of people. Functionally, the all-screen phone works similarly to my phone with bezels. In fact, it can be argued that they are less functional since they are more fragile. Anyway, my point is that these features are great for enthusiasts but as we’ve seen many-a-time with Android/Apple fanatics, they love the tech but don’t buy phones often enough. A perfect example of this is how much I love and will praise the S10 but unfortunately, I might not be buying it anytime soon unless I luck out on an enormous amount of money.

Is it Huawei?

Despite stellar reviews I don’t expect the S10 to sell as well as the S9 and a colleague suggested that Huawei’s entry into the European market might be another factor to consider. I mean Huawei is making fantastic devices but without concrete data to actually support that claim I’m not sure how true that is. No one concluded that Huawei was the reason why Apple sold fewer phones than expected and by that same measure, I would think the same can be true for Samsung.

Is this even a big deal?

For businesses that are always looking to grow this decline in numbers might be quite alarming but once you look at the S10’s pricing there’s a chance that Samsung might sell less handsets than before but still make more in terms of revenue. The S9 debuted at around $750 whilst the S10 costs $900. The same argument when Apple’s newest phones came out and cost more than before but ultimately their revenues lowered as well. Oh, the Galaxy Fold might do some wonders for their bottom line once you consider the device cost close to $2000 dollars…

Anyway as I indicated at the offset of this article, though mainstream media will act like there is a crisis of sorts the reality is that in terms of functionality, having an S8 and an S10 isn’t going to give you a world of difference and that’s before you even consider that one of the S10’s will cost you a minimum of $750 whilst S8’s can be found for as around $450-$500 (outside of Zim of course). Phones have peaked and consumers don’t need to buy a phone every year anymore, and we’ve been seeing this for a while now.