14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung’s discontinuation of the Galaxy Note 7 has had a major impact on the company’s mobile division, as well as on the businesses of component suppliers. It’s clear that a combination of multiple factors has caused the whole Note 7 fiasco and Samsung may need to rethink its whole smartphone strategy.
In the past few years, Samsung’s mobile division released two flagship smartphones per year, the Galaxy S model in H1 and the Galaxy Note in the second half of the year. The company worked hard on bringing innovation with each model in these two series, which means that its development departments must have surely faced tight deadlines.
This could have put enormous pressure on engineers, especially those from the quality assurance department. Some say that if the company had only released one premium smartphone per year, then it would have had more time to conduct rigorous testing.
Samsung could only release one flagship smartphone per year
Korea Herald reported that Samsung might ditch its current smartphone marketing strategy and release only one premium smartphone per year, to ensure product quality.
Samsung hasn’t made any official announcements on the matter, but the move would surely help the company avoid similar situations in the future. If the statement is true, then Samsung might only release the Galaxy S8 flagship next year, without any plans to provide a successor to the infamous Note 7.
The Galaxy Note 7 brought a new dual-curved design to the line, as well as iris scanning technology. This implied that engineers would have had to find ways to fit all components inside a slimmer Note body, which is why some believe that the design of the phone might be at fault for the unit overheating.
Investigations are still underway, but the fact that Samsung decided to test Galaxy Note 7 batteries in-house and go against industry practices of contracting third-party certified labs doesn’t help.