Samsung Electronics' latest Galaxy smartphone models should further solidify the company's lead in the Android market, but it's unclear whether they will steal share from Apple Inc.'s newest iPhones, analysts said.
Samsung's flagship Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus devices, available for preorder March 2 in the U.S., compete with Apple's iPhone X for consumers interested in high-end smartphones. The Samsung devices retail lower than the iPhone X, at $719.99 and $839.99, respectively, versus iPhone X's $999. Apple's iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, which also went on sale late last year with fewer advanced tech features than the iPhone X, retail closer to Samsung's newest phones, starting at $699 and $799, respectively.
But analysts said consumers are looking at more than just price when comparing Samsung versus Apple's latest phones.
Geoff Blaber, vice president of research at CCS Insight, said Apple and Samsung's consumer bases are very distinct at this point. "The number of instances when Samsung and the Android ecosystem is managing to bring over people from iOS is quite limited," he said. "The ease of transfer to a new iPhone makes it a lot easier to stay in [the Apple] ecosystem than it is to move to Android."
The Galaxy S9's updated camera and related features offers a good example of how Samsung continues to bolster its high-end offerings, Blaber said, "but it still has a long way to go to compete with Apple in that regard," he added.
The S9 camera's dual-aperture lens allows users to take photos in low-light conditions, and the language feature translates languages using the phone's camera. Meanwhile, the iPhone X's dual 12-megapixel wide angle and telephoto lenses provide for greater zoom capabilities and photo clarity.
Avi Greengart, research director of platforms and devices at GlobalData, the research firm formerly known as Current Analysis, said the new camera design will be key to Samsung's overall success.
"Improvements to the camera are sort of fundamental to the overall smartphone experience. It's an area where Samsung couldn't afford to fall behind," he said.
During the quarter ended in December 2017, a key time of year for retailers hoping to win big holiday sales, Apple passed Samsung to capture the top spot in the global smartphone market, due largely to the tech giant's iPhone 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X models, according to an International Data Corp. report. Overall shipments dropped nearly 6%, however, and Samsung remained the leader in the smartphone market during 2017.
IDC found that Samsung shipped 74.1 million units during the period, down 4.4% compared to the 77.5 million units a year earlier. The electronics giant saw 317.3 million shipments for 2017 overall, up 1.9% from the 311.4 million shipments in 2016. In comparison, Apple shipped 77.3 million iPhones, down about 1% from the year-ago quarter. For the full year, Apple shipped 215.8 million units, up 0.2% from the 215.4 million units shipped in 2016.
In addition to its upgraded camera, Samsung's S9 model touts new features like augmented reality-based emojis, which allows users to design 3-D avatars of themselves. This compares to the iPhone X's Animoji feature that lets people create and share animated characters using their voice and facial expressions.
Samsung's S9 devices are manufactured in the U.S. and equipped with QUALCOMM Inc.'s new Snapdragon 845 mobile platform, while the iPhone X is fitted with Apple's own A11 Bionic chip. The S9 and S9 Plus weigh 5.75 ounces and 6.67 ounces, respectively, while the iPhone X weighs 6.14 ounces.
Gregory Potter, an analyst with SNL Kagan, a research division of S&P Global Market Intelligence, said the S9's features are not radically different from those of the S8, its predecessor model. For Samsung to increase its marketshare in the global smartphone market, Potter suggested the company should make some of the S9's features more available on its lower-priced products.
"The S9, the S9+ and the Note line have always been known as the top-of-the-line Android phone," Potter said. "At the high-end of the market, [Samsung is] pretty secure, but it's just the low to mid-end where they need to bring [the prices of] some of those high-end features down."
