Despite seeing sales of smartphones at an all time high of 72 million units, Samsung believes that the company's smartphone growth will slow down in the third quarter, owing to increased competition and the addition of more low to mid-range models to the portfolio.
The latter will also be responsible for a lower average selling price for the smartphones Samsung sells in the current quarter, something it has warned investors against, though margins are down even at the high-end thanks to the increased spend on marketing the Galaxy S4.
“The smartphone market will likely continue to grow in the third quarter, but there's a chance that the pace of growth may slow as competition intensifies with new model releases.”
-Kim Hyun-joon, vice president, Samsung Mobile
The competition Hyun-joon mentions is going to be the hardest in the phablet category, as Sony is bringing the Xperia Z Ultra to compete with Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Note III, so even if the latter is expected to be sold in the millions, it isn't going to be as easy as it has been in the past. Even HTC is supposedly working on a phablet (the HTC One Max), and the HTC One has already given a slow yet noticeable fight to the Galaxy S4, so it is surely going to be a tough ride leading into the end of this extremely eventful year.
Of course, the fact that overall smartphone growth is also expected to slow down isn't going to help the case for Samsung, so let's just keep hoping the company continues to improve on what they've already put on the market, and makes their “next big thing” a force to reckon with.
