Samsung looks to put more cutting-edge features in cheaper smartphones to fend off Chinese brands

Samsung Electronics, the world’s No 1 smartphone brand by shipment, plans to overhaul its strategy by putting its most advanced features in its cheaper range to appeal more to customers born after the 1980s, according to its mobile chief Koh Dong-jin.

Instead of concentrating on its top-of-the-range Galaxy S and Galaxy Note devices, which are generally priced at US$1,000 and above, Koh told CNBC the South Korean company will in future equip its mid-priced Galaxy A series of smartphones with the most cutting-edge features first.

“In the past, I brought the new technology and differentiation to the flagship model and then moved to the mid-end,” Koh told CNBC in an interview last week. “But I have changed my strategy from this year to bring technology and differentiation points starting from the mid-end.”

The first of these phones will come onto market later this year, he said. A spokesman for Samsung did not immediately reply to an email request for comment on the interview.

In China, the world’s largest smartphone market, Samsung has been edged out of the top tier of handset vendors with less than 1 per cent share in the past quarter. Domestic brands including Huawei Technologies, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi, whose flagship models are generally half the price of Samsung’s comparable models or less, account for more than 80 per cent of the market.