Report says Samsung’s new flagship phones, the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, ‘failed to wow consumers’
A new market research report published by Argus Insights found that consumer demand for smartphones dropped by 8% in the second quarter of 2015 compared to the same time last year. The report is based off of data drawn from some 622,000 consumer reviews generated since January 2014.
In a nutshell, Apple and Samsung are still decidedly the most popular smartphone brands, but overall demand has declined despite Samsung’s hyped launch of the two new high-end handsets.
Samsung gave a first look at the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge at an event in February co-located with Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona, Spain. Units begin hitting the domestic market about two months later.
“Consumer data reveals that despite the release of two flagship phones, Samsung failed to wow consumers,” the report stated. “While the new Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge created an initial influx in demand, those gains quickly fell off, and Samsung saw less happy, less interested flagship users.”
Argus Insights CEO and founder John Feland said the new Samsung phones “barely made a difference in overall excitement. In fact, iPhone 6 demand, as measured by consumer review analysis, jumped when customers waiting to purchase and apparently open to buying a Samsung, instead chose an Apple iPhone.”
Feland said that Samsung would have to “more than just upgraded hardware” to take market share from Apple.
Speaking to the general declining trend, Feland speculated “that perhaps the smartphone market has hit a saturation point.”
Argus Insights bills itself as “Silicon Valley’s first big data driven market coach,” according to the company’s website.
