The Samsung Galaxy S4 had big shoes to fill this year, following the amount of success that Samsung had with the Galaxy S III last year. When a company makes a good product, people naturally expect that product to have a good follow-up. After all, if it's an upgrade from the previous year's model, the hope is that the device will only get better. While the Galaxy S4 did indeed get better, it didn't seem to be all that varied from the Galaxy S III. Still, the device managed to sell 10 million units within the first month of it going on sale, which is an admirable figure to say the least. The phone was far from a flop.
But since then, sales have slowed. This is expected, because since the release of the Galaxy S4 plenty of other manufacturers have released flagships of their own. However, because sales have reportedly slowed down for the Galaxy S4, the Korean company is aiming for an earlier release for the next iteration of their Galaxy S line. Rumors suggest sometime in the middle of January.
Really, this is to be taken with a grain of salt. Every rumor should be taken with a grain of salt in this industry. Or... any industry, really. That being said, this is an article based on a rumor, a rumor which I hope isn't true.
But if that rumor turns out to be true, here's why I think pushing another device out so soon wouldn't necessarily work out for the better. Simply put, it would seem like Samsung is trying too hard. Technology already moves fast enough as it is; too fast, sometimes. With Samsung being in the position that its in, by releasing a phone even a couple of months before expected, other manufacturers would probably follow suit. If you truly want to bring sales in, then the best way to do so is to truly bring something crazy amazing to the table, and you can't rush that kind of thing. Even if the product is ready by January, then take the extra two or three months to perfect the device. Nothing kills sales more than some majorly overlooked problem, and I'm fairly certain anybody will tell you that they would rather wait a few extra months in order to make sure everything comes out as perfect as possible.
If the Galaxy S4 is really doing that poorly in sales, I can only think of one thing that might have led it to get to this point, and it's not the Galaxy S4 itself. It was every version of the device that came out after it. The Zoom, the Active, the Mini, and then you had the Galaxy Megas to boot. The Megas may not have been part of the Galaxy S4 line, but it was still coming from Samsung. I think the Galaxy S4 would have sold a lot better if it had released just one Galaxy S4, and perhaps a Mini to go along with it. I've expressed my feelings in the past that stated that the Galaxy S4 would have been more noteworthy if the Active hadn't been sold as a separate device, but instead made to be a part of the original Galaxy S4 - or at least tried to incorporate waterproofing and dustproofing, to some degree.
But that's what I think should happen with the new Galaxy S device. Instead of releasing new version after new version, find a way to try and incorporate all of these things into one device. I mean, at least to an extent. That's how you're going to get people to love the device. Nobody cares about being the first, or that it's being released earlier than usual. That looks sketchy, or at least it does to me. If sales are that bad, then they need to figure out why they're that bad - but I guarantee that the reason isn't because the device wasn't released early enough. It either had to do with the fact that the device was too similar to the Galaxy S III, or that there were too many Samsung phones being pumped out. You think choices would be a good thing, and they are; but the more choices you offer the thinner the numbers are going to stretch out across the board. The Galaxy S III did well, and there was only the Galaxy S III and a Mini. The Galaxy S4 hasn't (apparently) done so well, and there's four of them. Seems like there's a possible correlation between the two.
What it really boils down to, though, is that there shouldn't be such a focus on releasing the device early - it should be about making the device perfect.
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