Samsung bets big on Galaxy A to compete with Apple
By Baek Byung-yeul
Seen is a poster for Samsung Electronics' Galaxy A Event, which will take place online on March 17. Samsung said Monday it will unveil the new lineup of mid-range smartphones during the event. Courtesy of Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics will hold an online event unveiling new smartphones in its Galaxy A series on March 17.
The Galaxy A series is Samsung's mid-range smartphone and plays a pivotal role in the company's efforts to retain its status as the global top-selling smartphone maker due to the volume number of smartphones sold under the A series.
Although Samsung did not make an official announcement about the new gadgets, industry analysts forecast that the company will release five new Galaxy A devices equipped with functions comparable to premium phones, but at more affordable prices, to compete with Apple's new mid-range iPhone SE3.
“The Galaxy A series is Samsung Electronics' most popular smartphone category, leading the democratization of Galaxy innovations that is giving people the power to create, connect and thrive,” Samsung said in an invitation letter released Monday.
“This year, Samsung is taking the impactful Galaxy innovations for the A series even further. The awesome new Galaxy A series devices are designed to provide the fully loaded experience that people want from a smartphone.”
Market tracker Omdia said the Galaxy A12 was the top-selling smartphone in 2021 with a sales record of 51.8 million. The model was followed by Apple's iPhones such as the iPhone 12, 13 and 11.
“Although the average selling price of Apple's iPhones, which are included in the top 10, is five times higher than Galaxy A12, it is the most efficient model from Samsung, shipping more than 50 million per year as a single model,” said Jusy Hong, a senior researcher at Omdia.
The success of the Galaxy A series is extremely important for Samsung, because the company desperately needs a breakthrough in the highly-competitive smartphone market. Samsung released its latest high-end smartphone, Galaxy S22, recently, but was soon embroiled in a scandal over its Game Optimizing Service (GOS) app.
While Samsung advertised the unbeatable high performance of its S22 phones, it was confirmed that the GOS application is compulsorily run in the background to avoid overheating problems.
The GOS is basically designed to optimize the performance of Galaxy devices when playing games, but users found that the service cannot be turned off manually, which resulted in lower quality during gameplay. Some of the smartphone performance testing results showed that the S22 devices running the GOS were found to show around half the performance Samsung initially said.
Facing a consumer backlash, Samsung offered an update that enables users to turn off the GOS manually, but the company has not escaped criticism for misleading consumers.
“Galaxy A series smartphones account for the majority of Samsung's smartphone sales. The new A-series smartphones are expected to show performance that meets consumer expectations,” an official from a local IT company said on condition of anonymity.