Samsung’s busy 2021 starts with an Unpacked … and new gadgets

An expanded line of folding. More 5G phones. Smarter gadgets. Computers, TVs, appliances and a host of other devices. Maybe even lower prices. After a crazy 2020, the next year may be one of Samsung’s busiest.

To take advantage of the opportunity brought by 2021, the South Korean company needs to be bolder to regain its status as an innovation powerhouse, while fulfilling its promises to make consumers’ lives easier.

The company’s head of mobile has already given a glimpse of what Samsung has to offer. Tae-moon Roh, Samsung’s president and head of mobile communications, said in a blog post in mid-December that his company will expand its folding line and make devices more “accessible”, probably a polite way to say more cheap. It will also place more emphasis on camera and video features and will bring features from your Galaxy Note devices, such as S Pen support, to your next Galaxy S21 phones.

“We have never believed in a one-size-fits-all mobile experience, and we never will,” Roh said in the blog post. He added that Samsung is working on “revolutionary advancements” in 5G, artificial intelligence and the internet of things to reset the boundaries of what mobile can do and to let consumers “tailor their mobile experiences to fit their lives — not the other way around.” 

If those topics sound familiar,  it’s because Samsung largely targeted the same areas in 2020. Samsung was one of the first companies to dive into 5G and foldables, though those bets haven’t yet paid off. There aren’t enough compelling reasons for consumers to need one of the 20 5G phones Samsung has introduced, and its foldables are too expensive to sell in high numbers. Despite the millions Samsung’s sunk into AI, its devices aren’t much better at talking to each other or interacting with their owners. And though the coronavirus pandemic created the opportunity to put the smart home at the center of everyone’s life, Samsung has been slower than Google and Amazon to make the internet of things a reality. Even with four Unpacked mobile events — Samsung’s flashy product showcases — the company wasn’t top of mind for most consumers in 2020. 

“Samsung was just forgotten for a lot of the time,” Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi said. “It lost a little bit of that cool factor it used to have.” 

In some ways, not being top of mind was good. Samsung didn’t have the problems of Huawei, which faces US sanctions and may soon run out of components for its phones, or the struggles of competing Chinese vendors, wich are dealing with the US trade war. Samsung was never called to testify before the US Congress, no phones exploded, it wasn’t the victim of a major hack and it wasn’t criticized for failing to contain the spread of misinformation.

Still, Samsung’s lineup hasn’t created the buzz that tech products like Apple’s new 5G-enabled iPhone 12 devices have managed to generate. In 2021, the company will have to find a way to capture attention in a world that won’t look like the one when 2020 began. Samsung may get its first chance with an earlier-than-normal Unpacked event that’s expected on Jan. 14, a month ahead of the usual schedule.

A whole new world

Like its competition, Samsung is grappling with the novel coronavirus pandemic and the impact that’s having on consumers. When COVID-19 first started spreading, worries about the illness caused a dramatic slowdown in phone purchases as people around the globe decided the device they had was good enough. Demand eventually recovered as new 5G phones began to hit the market, but not soon enough to boost Samsung’s Galaxy S21 sales. Computers and TVs have been hot items with people stuck at home, and appliances are purchases consumers can put off only so long. Samsung has benefited from surging demand for all of those products.

Samsung has shifted strategy in response to what’s happening. It sped up the development and release of its Galaxy S20 FE, which, at $700, is a cheaper addition to its flagship phone lineup. It also tweaked the sales strategy for devices like the Galaxy Note 20. And it’s benefited from its less expensive Galaxy A Series, which it’s likely to expand this coming year.

In 2021, Samsung plans to expand the lineup of devices crucial to its future, specifically foldables. It will possibly kill off those that don’t fit with its vision, like the Note family. The first glimpses of Samsung’s plans for mobile in 2021 will come at Unpacked.

Samsung is expected to launch three new Galaxy S devices in January. The new S21 models will likely be the 6.2-inch S21, the 6.7-inch S21 Plus and the 6.8-inch S21 Ultra. The devices are expected to look largely the same but have bigger camera modules, boosting their photo and video capabilities. Overall, those devices aren’t expected to be major overhauls from their predecessors.

Unpacked could also mark Samsung’s expansion into new areas, including Tile-like smart trackers. 

Samsung likely won’t shake up pricing for the Galaxy S lineup. But it could make bigger changes with its other devices, including its foldables. 

Hello foldables, goodbye Note?

Samsung, like most tech companies, has struggled to sell its pricey smartphones during the pandemic. While Samsung was one of the first companies to release a phone with 5G, Huawei quickly surpassed it in shipments. The Chinese handset maker became the biggest smartphone vendor in the world in the second quarter, the first time in nine years that Samsung or Apple hadn’t held the title. 

Samsung will try to claw back ground, and US sanctions against Huawei will help it do so. Samsung overall regained ground in the third quarter to again become the top smartphone vendor as Huawei struggled to survive.

The Korean company’s 2021 phone lineup may offer more price points, including more affordable foldables. Roh said the company is “expanding [its] folding portfolio, so that this innovative category is more accessible to everyone. “This is almost certainly a code for lower prices, which could help attract consumers to what are currently budget-saving devices. The Galaxy Z Fold 2 sells for $ 2,000, while the Galaxy Z Flip with 5G costs $ 1,450.

Samsung could keep older generations of its folders close at lower prices, as well as come up with new and cheaper designs, while trying to help devices get out of their small niche. Still, its rivals, like LG, will move beyond foldable screens in 2021. LG is expected to display a phone with a foldable screen, similar to their roll-up TVs.

Samsung will have to ensure that it doesn’t overwhelm buyers with too many options. One way to do this is by trimming your phone line. As it expands the folding options, Samsung can also kill the Galaxy Note.

“It is difficult for Samsung to justify the Galaxy S21 and Note 21 when they look very similar,” said Ken Hyers, an analyst at Strategy Analytics. “If the ulta-premium market [phones] is limited and you don’t want to overwhelm it with many of these products, the Note series seems to be the one that made the most sense to cut. “

Samsung’s Note has struggled to stand out in recent years. When the big screen devices were launched in 2011, they created a new category of devices that was on the line between tablets and smartphones. So-called phablets were first ridiculed and then copied. Now the category of phablet no longer exists and it is almost impossible to buy a phone that comes with a small screen. Apple’s iPhone SE is a notable exception.

Along with the packaging on the largest possible screen, the Samsung Note had two other points of sale: it came with a S Pen and presented the most sophisticated specifications possible. When Samsung’s first foldable, the Galaxy Fold, was launched in 2019, the Note line no longer had the most flashy components or the largest screen. The main differentiator of the Note in relation to the prominent line of the Galaxy S and its foldable Galaxy Z has become the pen.

In his blog post, Roh noted that Samsung is “excited to add some of the [the Note’s] features most appreciated for other devices in our line. “This could be a hint that the stylus is reaching the Galaxy S21, removing the Note’s last differential.

Smarter gadgets?

In previous years, Samsung had one of the largest booths – and most striking press conferences – at CES. In 2020, the hottest news of the show was a secret artificial intelligence company created by a Samsung executive, and its Neon “artificial humans” emerged from Samsung’s Advanced Research and Technology Labs (STAR ​​Labs) before Neon become your own company. Although the technology was not included in any Samsung product, Neon was a success.

Samsung also had a cute robot, called Ballie, on the show. The idea was that the robot, which looked like a big tennis ball, would serve as a companion that follows its owner and responds to commands. At CES 2019, Samsung showed four different types of robots to consumers.

Like almost all major technology companies, Samsung is giving a big boost to artificial intelligence. The technology, which gives devices some ability to act on their own, is seen as the next big wave of computing – the way we’ll interact with our gadgets in the future. Instead of running your finger across the phone screens, we will talk to our devices or microphones that we always hear in our homes and offices. The final promise for AI is to predict what you want before ordering.

Samsung’s biggest boost with AI on its devices revolved around its Bixby voice assistant, which first arrived on the 2017 Galaxy S8. The digital assistant since then made its way to smart TVs, refrigerators, washers, air conditioners, speakers and more. Previously, Samsung intended to place Bixby voice controls on all devices it sells until 2020. But the company didn’t say much about Bixby over the past year, and the technology is seen to lag behind Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri. The Galaxy Home smart speaker that Samsung started talking about three years ago did not materialize as a real product.

Instead, Samsung seems to have put its AI efforts into features that work behind the scenes, like enhanced camera technology, or robots that impress the public, but nothing more. Ballie was possibly the cutest example of Samsung’s AI boost, but the company said nothing more about the robot. (Likewise, Neon could have proved popular, since people stayed at home during the pandemic, but it is not available to consumers.) Samsung could use its CES 2021 press conference to display more robots, although it would be better to focus on how well devices work together.

Roh, in his mid-December blog post, said that Samsung will have more ahead of artificial intelligence for mobile devices in 2021. The company has “been working hard to expand the highly advanced AI capabilities on the device within the Galaxy family, allowing our devices to continue learning from daily activities and routines to take better pictures and videos, maximize battery life and storage space, optimize screens and more, “wrote Roh. “We are planning to expand these custom features to every facet of the Galaxy product portfolio to enable people to be productive and do all the things they enjoy.”

Now Samsung needs to make its new offering live up to that promise.