SEOUL Reuters - Samsung Electronics unveiled its latest premium phones on Wednesday in a test of its brand power as the market for mobiles goes through a unprecedented contraction.
The Galaxy S 23 smartphone series has better cameras and faster chips than its predecessor, but analysts said early sales would face weak demand as consumers spent less on discretionary goods due to rising inflation.
The top-line S 23 Ultra has Samsung's first-ever 200 megapixel camera sensor, which offers clearer photos after enlargement, and the series has adopted Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 mobile processor, which is faster than chips used in the S 22.
The S 23 is the first Samsung phone to use Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card for games with heavy processor demands and live-streaming playability. Many consumers judge a phone's quality based on functions.
Samsung is working with Epic Games to optimise the gaming experience on the phone.
The base Galaxy S 23 will be priced from $799 and two higher-specific versions, the S 23 Plus and S 23 Ultra, from $999 and $1,199, respectively. Despite increases in component costs, Samsung kept the prices the same as for last year's model.
Global smartphone shipments showed the largest decline in a single quarter in the last quarter in October-December, when they were down 18.3% on a year ago, at 300.3 million units, according to data released by research firm IDC last month. The figures cast doubt on forecasts for a modest recovery in the market for mobiles this year.
In that tough environment, analysts said that Samsung's strategy would focus on profitability through premium offerings, including the S series and foldables.
Liz Lee, associate director at Counterpoint, said that Samsung can't afford to focus on expanding volume.
It must simplify low- and mid-range products, the parts of the market where Chinese competitors have caught up a lot. Samsung said on Tuesday that a decline in low- and mid-range smartphone sales in the fourth quarter had been greater than expected.
With the launch of the S 23 the company is improving interconnectivity of its devices to lock customers into Samsung products rather than abandoning devices from Apple and other rivals. Analysts say that Samsung has far to go in the area of interconnectivity.
It said that users would have to upgrade their phone's software to use that feature.