Samsung Gulf Electronics will launch its Galaxy S5 smartphone in the UAE on Wednesday (April 2) even as rumours about the bigger (and with better resolution) iPhone 6 are now getting red-hot.
With Samsung set to launch its new Galaxy S5 in the UAE in a day, and the HTC One (M8) also making itself available on the same day, those in the market for a new smartphone have a tough call on their hand in terms of whether one should wait for the upcoming iPhone 6 or go for one of the devices that are already (almost) available in the country?
Simultaneously, however, rumours about the next-gen iPhone’s launch are gaining traction, seeding doubts in the minds of those willing to shell out a few thousand dirhams for their new handy candy. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) will be unveiling a bigger and higher resolution flagship iPhone device, the iPhone 6, in September this year, according to the Nikkei Business Daily.
According to the report, the upcoming iPhone 6 will come in two versions with a 4.7- or 5.5-inch screen (iPhone currently has a 4-inch display).
The Cupertino-based Apple is reportedly ordering its higher-resolution liquid crystal display screens from Japanese electronics giant Sharp, Japan Display and South Korea’s LG Display, the report noted. Apple released the iPhone 5 in September 2012 and the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c last year.
It is no secret that Korean smartphone maker Samsung has made a serious dent to Apple’s standing as the leading manufacturer of the most desired smartphones. According to data published by Strategy Analytics, in the final quarter of 2013, Samsung shipped 86 million smartphones worldwide compared with Apple’s 51 million (which was a record for Apple).
For the whole of 2013, Samsung shipped a record 320 million smartphones while Apple shipped 153 million, less than half of Samsung’s smartphones. And in a surprise for some, Huawei with 50.4 million smartphones shipped in 2013 now occupies the No. 3 slot in the very dynamic global smartphones market, followed by LG (47.6 million smartphones) and Lenovo (45.5 million smartphones).
In the UAE, Samsung is the undisputed leader, with a 49.4 per cent share as of December 2013, according to GfK. In overall mobile phones category, Samsung has achieved 44.7 per cent market share and recorded a solid growth of 46.3 per cent from 2012 to 2013, the firm said in a recent media statement. This growth was fuelled by the wide acceptance of Samsung’s successful line-up of smartphones in the country.
Granted, Samsung has a range of smartphones targeted at every segment of the market while Apple, even with its recent branching off of the iPhone into iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c models, has just two smartphone devices.
And Samsung maintains that it is pleased with its chain-gun approach versus Apple’s sniper strategy. “Samsung has made its mark by manufacturing phones for every demographic, and has increasingly become known for leading the market through user inspired innovation,” the firm noted in the media statement. Nevertheless, Samsung has really established itself as the leader of the pack in the past two years.
Until 2011, Apple and Samsung were literally head-to-head, with IDC estimating that Samsung shipped 94.2 million smartphones in 2011 against Apple’s 93.1 million iPhones. Nokia was at No. 3 (77.3 million smartphones), followed by Research in Motion (remember BlackBerry?) with 51.1 million BBs. HTC was a distant No. 5 with 43.6 million units.
That changed in 2012, with Samsung galloping ahead with 215.8 million handsets versus Apple’s 136.8 million – as is evident, both grew massively but Samsung grew much more rapidly, and both the titans grew at the expense of the other three players even as the market expanded. Nokia’s smartphones shipment halved to 35.1 million; HTC’s dropped to 32.6 million while RIM’s went down to 32.5 million.
In fact, that year saw other players like Huawei (30.2mn), LG (26.3mn) and Lenovo (23.5mn) starting to make inroads into the global market and cornering a bigger share.