Samsung's Unpacked event is almost here. It's going to take place on July 10 in Paris, France. It's going to be a glorious event, packed full of Samsung's latest technology, as the company has quite a few devices up its sleeve to unveil. All of the rumors and reports so far have suggested that alongside the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6, Samsung will be unveiling new smartwatches, new earbuds, and the much-awaited Galaxy Ring.
A lot of information about these devices has already been leaked online, as it always does. This has become a common theme with Samsung events. The early leaks and rumors are followed by detailed 3D renders and eventually press renders, so there's little left to the imagination when the devices are unveiled on stage by Samsung's top brass.
However, the pricing information is never really confirmed until the actual day. Sure, there are some reports here and there, but the most authentic details about pricing, particularly region-wise pricing, only emerge at Unpacked and that's when fans truly find out how much it's going to cost them to upgrade to the new Samsung devices this time around.
I'm sure that many fans are looking forward to the many new devices that Samsung will be unveiling this week. What many of them might not like to see is a price increase for the new devices. That thought is definitely going to be there in the back of their minds. Inflation is rampant across the globe and everything feels so much more expensive everywhere. People have witnessed price increases for almost everything so it's understandable why they might feel that price hikes could be on the horizon for new mobile devices as well.
We saw this last year with the Galaxy Watch 6. The base model was $20 more expensive than previous year's Galaxy Watch 5. The Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra was $100 pricier than the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra. This shows that Samsung isn't afraid of raising prices when it needs to, so that very much remains a possibility for the upcoming devices.
There's no official confirmation about the prices for its new products so it's hard to say right now if Samsung will make them more expensive. To play the devil's advocate for a bit, though, one could understand the compulsion for Samsung if it does indeed raise the prices. The supply chain pressures, including increased freight and raw material costs, that are weighing down on all manner of industries are being faced by Samsung as well.
There are also business compulsions for Samsung. The company hasn't been making money hand over fist the way it has done before due to a prolonged downturn in the memory segment and less off take of production capacity at its foundry business. Samsung Electronics needs to plug the gap somewhere so if increasing efficiency in the supply chain isn't possible to extract more margins, the other way is to pass on more of that cost to customers in the form of a price hike.
It's simply not a question of what's another $50 or $100 to someone who's buying a device worth more than $1000? If it's indeed making that decision, Samsung would have done the maths to be reasonably certain that the price hikes won't negatively impact buyer sentiment to the extent that the loss in sales would render the price increase meaningless. Then again, there hasn't been much blowback from previous price bumps, so Samsung would be fairly confident that its customers have the ability to pay the higher prices.
Sure, it doesn't feel right at a time where the price direction of everything seems to be going only up without no signs of ever coming down, but such are the realities of the world we live in now. Ultimately, it's up to the customers to decide whether or not the new Samsung devices are worth paying the extra money for. Something tells me that there will be many that feel they are.
