As Samsung’s premium market share shrinks it is looking to appeal to consumers who are increasingly sharing videos of their antics on social media applications.
Although the differences on last year’s models are not dramatic, Samsung is emphasizing new features that are supposed to produce more vibrant and more stable videos.
One of the most noticeable changes is the addition of a built-in pen to take digital notes and draw on the screen of the Ultra model that will cost 1,200 US Dollars.
That “S Pen” had to be purchased separately for 40 US Dollars on last-year’s model, which didn’t include a slot to hold it when not in use.
The standard Galaxy S22, priced at 800 US Dollars and the Galaxy S22 Plus, priced at 1,000 US Dollars don’t include the S Pen, which was popularized on its Note line of phones that were made more for getting work done than for leisure and entertainment.
“For Samsung, from a business perspective, they kind of had a ton of flagship phones and with the chip shortage and how supply chain problems are now, it just made sense to bring that down to a more reasonable number, and they clearly think there’s demand for a big phone with the stylus. There are a lot of fans of the Note series who I think will be happy to see that it’s sort of living on in a way,” says Allison Johnson, a phone reviewer at The Verge.
All three of the Galaxy S22 models—available in stores on 25 February 2021 — are supposed to have longer battery life and better cameras, particularly for pictures taken in dark lighting and for videos that Samsung estimates now account for about 80 percent of internet usage.
“Design-wise and in other ways, as far as features go, it is really an iterative update. There’s the latest processor, they’ve refreshed those kind of specs to kind of keep up, but they’ve talked a little bit about some of the camera improvements, particularly for low light video and still photo capture. They say that night photography will be better and that there’s better depth mapping to kind of help with that portrait mode effect. Where it can, it can identify your subject down to a single hair and cut them out and kind of blur the background in a way that’s a little more convincing,” explains Johnson.
But Samsung’s most expensive phones have been losing some of their luster recently, even as its cheaper models continue to sell extremely well.
In the premium category consisting of smartphones priced at 800 US Dollars and above, though, Samsung’s global market share has shrunk from 28 percent in 2019 to 18 percent through the first nine months of 2021, according to IDC’s calculations.
Meanwhile, Apple’s share of that lucrative segment, has climbed from 63 percent to 72 percent during the same period, based on IDC’s figures.
The latest iPhones introduced last September have proven so popular that Apple supplanted Samsung as the worldwide leader in total market share across all price categories during the October-December period, according to IDC.
Drew Blackard, Samsung’s vice president of product management, disputed IDC’s findings about the shift in sales in the premium phone market and maintained the company is still holding its own.
“We are very comfortable where we are,” Blackard told The Associated Press during an interview. “But we are very ambitious, and have a plan for growth.”
