The lack of fanfare at yesterday's launch of Samsung's Note 4 smartphone has come to reflect the South Korean's company's slowing global dominance in the Middle East.
According to International Data Corporation (IDC), Samsung’s market share across the Middle East and Africa dropped by 10 per cent to just under 50 per cent at the beginning of this year.
“Despite their growth in unit sales they are not keeping up with how fast the market is growing, which has been captured by other vendors,” said Nabila Popal, the research manager of handsets and displays at IDC. “Their market share is declining.”
Globally, Samsung lost 7 per cent of the smartphone market share to 24.9 per cent in the second quarter of this year, while Huawei jumped from 4.3 per cent in the second quarter of 2013 to 6.7 per cent this year. It is a trend that some of the retailers in the region are experiencing.
“Samsung is definitely slowing down in the region and there are two aspects to it,” said Ajay Pathak, the head of mobility and solutions at Jumbo Electronics.
“First they have not obtained their planned growth figures and second the mid-segment Dh700-Dh1,110 market is being taken by Huawei and Lenovo which have come out very, very strong across the Gulf.”
Mr Pathak said that LG’s new flagship phone, the G3, was now outselling Samsung’s S5 in many of its stores.
“There has been a slowdown because there are other devices and more brands available and Samsung is having a bit of a squeeze at the moment,” said Omar Kassim, the founder of JadoPado.
Many expect Apple's iPhone 6 plus to take away from Samsung's share once it arrives in the region.
“Everyone knows it will have an impact. The one complaint of Apple users in recent times has been the screen size and this is likely to have contributed to less loyal Apple users to convert to Samsung because of the larger screens,” said Ms Popal. “The iPhone 6 plus will definitely prevent such screen size motivated conversions from happening again.”
But Samsung and a few other retailers remain optimistic.
“Sales have been strong for us,” said Ashish Panjabi, the chief operating officer at Jacky’s Electronics, which operates Samsung brand shops in the UAE.
“The iPhone 6 may take some shares of the overall phablet market, but Apple still fails to include features like dual SIM, which has been very popular on the Galaxy S5 Duos.”
The Note 4 will be available in the UAE on October 17 and will be priced at Dh2,799.
thamid@thenational.ae
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