Samsung Electronics is going to enlarge the screen size of strategic Smartphone ‘Galaxy S6 Edge’ from 5.1inch to 5.7 inch, and this can be interpreted as a strategy to diversify world’s popular Edge model.
According to Smartphone business industry on June 1st, Samsung Electronics is planning on 5.7 inch Galaxy S6 Edge with August being its goal as a release date. It seemed that Samsung was planning 5.5 inch Galaxy S6 Edge Plus model, but it decided to increase the screen size by 0.2 inch.
The reason why Samsung decided to enlarge the screen size is due to Edge’s popularity, and it is a strategy to increase the whole Galaxy S6 series’ sales volume by strengthening its lineup.
According to Counterpoint Research that has head office in Hong Kong, 7.3 million copies of Galaxy S6 base models were shipped, and only 3.3 million copies of Galaxy S6 base models were sold within the month of April. 4 million copies were left in the inventory, and copies in the inventory were more than the same volume.
On the other hand, 3.4 million copies of Edge were shipped and 2.8 million copies were sold, which corresponds to only 600,000 copies being left in the inventory. Edge is very popular even though it is expensive. Samsung needs to increase Edge’s sales volume to increase the sales volume of Galaxy S6 series, and this is the reason why Samsung chose to change the screen size of Edge.
Edge models are difficult to be differentiated on color and design level as they have 4 different colors and Ironman edition.
Samsung is currently worried that although Edge has a large-screen, there isn’t an appropriate location to place a pen due to Edge’s design characteristic. There is also an overlapping problem in products as Samsung decided to change Edge’s size to 5.7 inch, which is same as Galaxy Note’s screen size. Their release dates also overlap since Galaxy Note 5 plans to be released in September.
According to the foreign press, it is predicting that Samsung will make the screen size of Galaxy Note 5 bigger than Note 4 and take out the pen.
A person related to this business said that Samsung internally still has not made up its decision due to this reason.
Regarding this, Samsung Securities revealed in its report on 27th that it predicts the sales volume of Galaxy S6 series will be around 50 million copies within this year.
Staff Reporter Kim, Youngjoo | ky.j@etnews.com