As we enter April, the season for announcing new smartphone models for the summer shopping season has begun, and Samsung Electronics has taken the lead in announcing the release of new smartphone models. On April 3, the company announced that it will release two models of the 2024 model “Galaxy S24” series of its flagship model “Galaxy S” for the Japanese market.
[Image]Two models will be released in the Japanese market: “Galaxy S24” and “Galaxy S24 Ultra”
■Japanese market strategy as seen from the domestic launch of the Galaxy S24 series The Galaxy S24 series is not only equipped with an enhanced camera, which has been a focus in the past, but is also equipped with a number of new functions that utilize the company’s proprietary AI technology, “Galaxy AI.” It is characterized by It has features such as a voice recorder that supports transcription, a “real-time interpreter” that translates voice calls into other languages, and an editing function that moves objects in the photo and fills in the rest with generative AI technology. There is. For details, we previously mentioned this in this series when the global version was announced, and we also reviewed the global version of the top model “Galaxy S24 Ultra”, so please refer to that. In the global version, the on-device AI was not very good at processing Japanese, but the company is said to be putting a lot of effort into improving its Japanese AI processing performance in preparation for its release in Japan. I’d like to try it again after it’s released to see how much the accuracy has actually improved. So this time, I would like to take a look at Samsung Electronics’ new Japanese market strategy, which was revealed with the announcement of the Galaxy S24. First of all, the Galaxy S24 series will be released in Japan, but only the Galaxy S24 Ultra and the standard model “Galaxy S24” will be released. Like the previous Galaxy S series, the large screen model “Galaxy S24+” will not be released. is. As before, sales channels for mobile phone companies are NTT Docomo and KDDI (au brand). It’s a little worrisome that Rakuten Mobile, which sold the Galaxy S23, has been left out, but what’s more worrisome is the release of the SIM-free version, essentially the open market model, that was announced at the same time. . At the same time as the release of the model for mobile phone companies, Samsung Electronics also announced the release of the SIM-free version model. SIM-free versions of the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Ultra will be released on April 11th at the Samsung Online Shop, but the release date is exactly the same as the release date of the models for the two mobile phone companies. Therefore, users of Softbank and Rakuten Mobile, whose Galaxy S24 series will not be released, can purchase the SIM-free version and use it on the same day as NTT Docomo and au users. This shows that Samsung Electronics’ strategy in the Japanese market has changed dramatically. This is a change in strategy from the previous policy of emphasizing smartphone sales from two mobile phone companies to a policy of strengthening smartphone sales on its own. In fact, signs of this have been seen since 2022, and in the same year, Samsung Electronics began selling the SIM-free smartphone “Galaxy M23 5G” for the open market in Japan. Since then, we have gradually increased sales of models for the open market, and in 2023 we will be selling SIM-free versions of our latest folding smartphone models, the Galaxy Z Flip5 and Galaxy Z Fold5. Additionally, in 2023, we will establish a Samsung online shop and make a major change in our brand strategy. The notation and name of the company’s brand in Japan has been changed from “Galaxy” to “Samsung.” With this new product, by simultaneously selling a model for two mobile phone companies and a SIM-free model for the open market, the company has clearly taken a step toward developing a market that is not limited to just two mobile phone companies. One of the reasons why Samsung Electronics made such a drastic change from its previous strategy is the slump in the domestic smartphone market. The Japanese smartphone market is in a very cold situation, with multiple domestic manufacturers announcing their withdrawal in 2023. One of the reasons for this is the weaker yen, and the other is the government’s regulations on smartphone discounts. In particular, the latter regulation was aimed at major mobile phone companies, which had previously acquired customers through deep discounts on smartphones such as the “1 Yen Smartphone.” Therefore, among smartphone manufacturers, the regulations are extremely detrimental to Samsung Electronics, which has placed the greatest emphasis on sales from major mobile phone companies. The company probably decided that it would be difficult to increase sales in the future with a system that relied solely on major mobile phone companies, and that it was necessary to establish its own sales channel. Another factor that cannot be overlooked is the rapid increase in sales of Google’s Pixel series of smartphones. In Japan, Apple has long been the largest company with a majority share, with Samsung Electronics and domestic manufacturers such as Sharp forming the second group. However, Google has rapidly emerged, and sales have increased dramatically since it resumed supplying devices to NTT DoCoMo with the Pixel 7a, which was released in 2023. Some research companies have reported that Google will have achieved 500% growth in the Japanese smartphone market in 2023. Of course, Google is an important partner for Samsung Electronics as it provides the Android operating system, but the company is feeling a growing sense of crisis as it has the potential to pose a huge threat to the domestic smartphone market. I’m sure. Since Google has tremendous name recognition and brand power in Japan, Samsung Electronics decided that it needed to further improve its brand power in order to compete with Google, and decided to expand sales on its own. However, since Japan’s open market is not very large, I feel that there is a limit to how much sales can be expanded. In order to further expand sales channels, the key point will likely be whether sales from major mobile phone companies will resume, and more specifically, whether or not they will resume business with SoftBank, which has not been supplying devices for a long time. .
Masahiro Sano