Samsung May Discontinue High-End Galaxy Note Smartphones (reuters.com) 54
Samsung may discontinue its premium Galaxy Note phone next year, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing sources with knowledge of the matter, a move that would reflect the sharp drop in demand for high-end smartphones due to the coronavirus pandemic. From the report: The Galaxy Note, known for its large screen and a stylus for note-taking, is one of two Samsung premium phone series -- the other being the more compact Galaxy S which draws in consumers with its state-of-the-art parts. At present, the South Korean tech giant does not have plans to develop a new version of the Galaxy Note for 2021, three sources said, declining to be identified as the plans were not public. Instead, the Galaxy S series' top model, the S21, will have a stylus and the next version of Samsung's foldable phone will be compatible with a stylus, which will be sold separately, one of the sources said.
I still use a S5 (Score:3)
Re: I still use a S5 (Score:3)
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Re: I still use a S5 (Score:1)
Pandemic or just no market? (Score:3)
The smartphone market has matured to the point where it's hard to persuade people to drop US$1000 on a device that really doesn't offer anything that differentiates it from the same device a year or two earlier. I like the attempt to tie it in to the Covid pandemic instead of calling it a marketing fail.
Best,
Re:Pandemic or just no market? (Score:5, Insightful)
I like the attempt to tie it in to the Covid pandemic instead of calling it a marketing fail.
It's both. A lot of people are broke and in danger of losing their shelter, they're not going to go spend the value of a viable used car on a phone. People love new shiny shit, if they have disposable income they will generally buy some over choosing to save their money.
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During major economic downturns. Their is actually a growth in the luxury market. This is often do to the fact when a company fires 3 people they will give the remaining employee a bigger salary, because they are doing more work, or people retiring early to avoid layoffs, and get some sort of early retirement bonus. Also if you are going to bunker down, you might as well have nice things.
I think this case, is more due to Samsung lackluster marketing of the Note combined with the fact people no longer see t
Re: Pandemic or just no market? (Score:3)
"During major economic downturns. Their is actually a growth in the luxury market."
Not all luxuries are created equal. Luxury food, drink, and drugs tend to do well, but other items vary.
"This is often do to the fact when a company fires 3 people they will give the remaining employee a bigger salary, because they are doing more work, or people retiring early to avoid layoffs, and get some sort of early retirement bonus."
None of that is happening now, because of economic uncertainty. Corporations are seeing
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"A lot of people are broke and in danger of losing their shelter, they're not going to go spend the value of a viable used car on a phone."
There was little overlap between people that were that financially vulnerable and those in the market for a high-end Galaxy phone in the first place.
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Probably most of such people were going to buy an iDevice, but not all of them.
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No, probably most such people were going to take whatever potato phone their carrier gives them for free.
or just apple eating their milkshake (Score:4, Interesting)
For the near future, Apples new phones are so ludicrously good neither Exynos nor Qualcom processors can compete, and then google eats all their app-level revenue. And They can't compete on price since the Chinese makers and LG can make things as good at the same lower price as samsung. And since they tried (and failed) at playing the user interface game, all android phones are the same at the user interface level now. Google owns your ass.
Right now the name of the game is integration. fat busses to a small dedicated GPU and a small dedicated AI processor and a small dedicated crytpo unit mean all those things get a lot more bang for the watt and thus are more useful. Apple's ability to control the integration stack is entering the straight-away on the race track just as the new dawn of AI enhanced everything is about to hit the killer-app world. So for a while samsung can see it self slipping further and fiurther behind. It has to beef up everything, integrate in things it doesn't itself make, and then somehow get google to write the OS to take advantage of it so the apps can roll out. See you in 5 years.
They are stupid not to hang in there. Holding the position of the top of the line and most reliably good brand in some market (android) is valuable even if one is not profiting at the moment. As apple about that. it's a gold mine even if occasionally yours isn't the best, people stick with you over the long run if they aren't ever dissatisfied and don't have to worry about shoping around.
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iThings stinks...
I am impressed with the depth and scope of your most erudite argusent.
Can I subcribe to your Newsletter?
Re: or just apple eating their milkshake (Score:1)
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Apple comes out with a device that out performs Samsung. Next year Samsung beats Apple... It isn't anything really new.
I think it is a case, that we really aren't getting anything new out of the Smartphone Market. The Folding Gimmick is kinda cool, but it is still a gimmick.
I went from an iPhone 10 to a Samsung S20 (My wife got my iPhone) After getting use to Android... I am like Meh... Using someones new iPhone 12 I am still like Meh... There isn't much new being offered in this market now. It has mat
Leapfrog ends for a while (Score:2)
For the past decade it's been a game of leapfrog like you say but I think a new paradigm is asserting itself. Apple will have huge economies of scale with the same chips and software in its PCs and phones. Samsung doesn't have that since they don't make the OSS their products use. They have a mixed bag of Qualcomm chips , their own and others. In the future Qualcomm will win because they will get more and more of the chop set through integration of gpu and AI and cpu and 5g subsystems.
So it's going to be
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There is literally nothing about the Apple phone that is better than the Android phone, except maybe the camera, and even that is debatable.
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Have you used a Samsung phone? They've heavily reskinned Android, and have replaced many of the built-in Android apps with their own special, and usually crappier, Samsung versions. A lot of the reasons I don't like Samsung phones is that they try way too hard to be like the iPhone. Heavy on the bling and the form-over-function, and not so much on usability.
Samsung has also taken a page out of Apple's book and introduced their own store, among other things, to try to get some of that sweet rent-seeking m
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It's not even a marketing fail. Marketing can only do so much to sell people something they don't need. Just like you'll see a ton of kids using $300 Chromebooks for all their daily tasks that would have required a $1000+ laptop 20 years ago, the cell phone market has also matured to the point where even the basic devices provide all the functionality most people are looking for.
Re:Apple is the market (Score:4, Informative)
Android is dying? It has 85% of the market and appears to have plateaued, but I don't see any data supporting it is "dying".
What the data does show though....is a slight market share loss for IOS projected over the next few years.
https://www.idc.com/promo/smar... [idc.com]
Re: Apple is the market (Score:2)
Yes, it's dying.
Apple has most the margin, the most valuable users for advertisers and soon they will start using their own search engine.
They're going to eat everyone's lunch unless someone makes a huge investment for a truly competitive high end integrated ecosystem. Google has an integrated ecosystem, but it's not high end because it datamines its users for advertisers and the mobile phone hardware development model is too lose to allow good QA and long term support (chromebook is the shining example of
Re: Apple is the market (Score:1)
Re: Apple is the market (Score:2)
Yet non Apple high end phones are struggling world wide while Apple buys the first 6+ months of TSMC newest nodes.
If you're in Europe check for rumours about the huge sweetheart deals they get from banks for Apple Pay ... their market power through near monopoly access to rich people and their ability to drive them is immense.
It will snowball from the top down in Europe too. China is the odd man out because the communists don't want a foreign monopoly, on the other hand the Chinese new rich are extremely im
Re: Apple is the market (Score:1)
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unit share != market share (Score:2)
most of the world drinks contaminated water and eats rice, but that doesnt' make those high profit margin items.
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The Note 10 removed the headphone jack (not a deal breaker, but there are times that my bluetooth headphones run o
so.....a slightly smaller note? (Score:3)
Coronavirus? (Score:3)
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Samsung has too many similar models. The Note isn't all that big any more, compared to other high end phones in its line up. The other big selling point used to be the pen, but you can have a pen with some of the Galaxy S range too now.
There just isn't enough to differentiate the Notes. They are great phones and many prefer them over the Galaxy S, but they could consolidate the two lines.
Reasonable: Consolidate and Focus (Score:2)
If the high-end Galaxy S has a slot for the s-pen (Score:1)
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All is fine. Otherwise, I guess I will be looking elsewhere when I someday hopefully many years from now move on from my Note 9. What a shame. There's so much potential for the s-pen. For one they could put a camera on it. It would make a much more useful selfie camera than whatever is on the phone itself.. imagine the angles
Imagine the (lack of) battery life!
Gave up on Samsung a while ago (Score:2)
The last Samsung phone I had was a Note4. It was very nice but I have given up on them because of all the crudware that they put on . I don't need an alternative mail client or anything else that is already there but the killer was Bixby. That really put the "crud" in it,,,
I've tried out OnePlus and they seem good but I find everything now is bigger than I need so I have a Huawei P30 Lite. Apparently this makes it harder for the NSA, CIA and other criminals to hack into my phone. Looks like my next pho
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but the killer was Bixby.
Amen.
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That's exactly the reason I moved away from Samsung.
If only they'd let me remove the bloatware, I might have stayed, but no. I'd uninstall an app and they're force-reinstall it.
Re:Gave up on Samsung a while ago (Score:4, Informative)
Don't buy any phone you can't root.
Moto phones have their drawbacks, notably poor support windows, but they are fully unlockable so the community supports them. My Moto X4 is running LineageOS, so I get Android 10 even though Moto didn't bother to bring it out for even the Android One edition of the Moto X4 after promising updates, the lying pricks. They ARE still kicking out the security updates, though (I have two phones, one is still on the official software and the bootloader locked.)
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Re: Gave up on Samsung a while ago (Score:1)
S Series Outgrew It (Score:2)
The original Note had a 5.3" screen. The latest S series has a 6.1" screen, with the S10+ having a 6.4" screen. How much larger can you get and still carry it in your pocket? They probably aren't selling enough to keep up with the costs of a separate product line.
Priced themselves out of the market (Score:5, Interesting)
A Note 20 Ultra 5G is $1,299.
It's not much of a status symbol, either; the iPhone 12 Pro Max does that just fine at $1,099.
The Note series used to be where new stuff made its debut and then trickled down to next year's S-model. Whether it was the IR blaster or the infinity edge or new button layouts or even a handful of software tricks (or sealed-in batteries; they weren't all good), the Note was the latest-and-greatest at a bit of a premium over the S-series. I could be wrong, but the last few years, it's basically been a larger S-series phone with a stylus and moar cameraz!!11. I'm not saying there isn't value to those things, but I am saying that the S20FE is $699, and there really doesn't seem to be much compromise in getting a phone that's almost half the price.
For those willing to make a few more compromises, the LG Stylo admittedly isn't winning any benchmarks, and its stylus lacks some of the Wacom awesome, but at $250, if you're not gaming and are willing to compromise a bit on the camera situation, 3/4 of the Note functions and features for 1/5 of the price definitely has a compelling value tradeoff.
Even for those willing to shell out for a Note series phone, it's likely to be held onto for far longer just due to the price. If I spend $1,300 on a phone, I'm not changing it out after two years. That's going to reduce the market for newer models; I can't be the only one.
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Apple was often criticized for being behind the curve. But it sounds like they caught up, catching Samsung off guard.
I could *never* have seen this coming (Score:2)
After years of being bombarded by monstrously overpriced "high-end" phones that are barely batter than the previous year's model, it's no wonder consumers are a little fatigued. COVID is just a useful excuse to get creatively bankrupt companies off the hook.
will be missed if true (Score:2)
I have been getting a new note every two years since the original and currently have the Note 10+. Was planning to get the next one. I really would hate to see the series disappear. If they do disappear, maybe one of the other phones will have a storage slot for the s-pen, That is what I really like about the note, almost no way to lose the s-pen and I would lose mine or stick it in a drawer and forget about it.
I only worry that adding the s-pen to the other phones will only increase the price - wonder
Older Galaxy S phones (Score:1)
And nothing of value was lost (Score:2)
Also-ran, buggy, power-hungry, slow-ass...
Whew... (Score:2)
Phone prices have gotten too damn high. I almost bought a $1,299 note 20 ultra over the weekend but had a reality check, I can't justify paying that much money for something that would be worth 10% the original value in 2 years.
Why not discontinue their software? (Score:2)