Samsung Fights Success With The Galaxy S6 Edge

The Galaxy S6 Edge has picked up critical acclaim around the world alongside the standard Galaxy S6, and early indications are that the more advanced handset has been selling out, with customers ready to wait for more stock on the S6 Edge rather than switch sales to the vanilla S6. Samsung’s JK Shin has been forthright in the stock issues around the screen, citing lower yields than expected on the organic LED screen.

I’m still not convinced that such a critical announcement was the best spin to put on the sold-out handset, but it does not appear to have dampened demand for the S6 Edge. The production issues around the screen have also limited the numbers available. In a perfect world where the production issues were solved earlier in the design process I still feel the right decision would have been for Samsung to release only one Galaxy S6 model, and that model would have been the model with the curved screen.

Alas the production difficulties coupled with Samsung’s financial performance in 2014 casting serious doubts over the retail performance of the Galaxy range, the South Korean company played it safe and went with a product mix of the vanilla S6 sporting its traditional flat screen/bezel arrangement, and the S6 Edge with its inspirational turn.

Given the accelerated production schedule, I’d expect the S6 Edge to outsell the vanilla S6 when the numbers are added together at the end of the year.

That’s good for Samsung. Once of the question marks over the Seoul-based company was around innovation and implementing new ideas. The ‘fast-follower’ model of design and production allowed Samsung to capitalise on the rapidly changing smartphone market in the early years of the 21st century, but could it bring a new idea to the table when every smartphone was expected to have the same feature set?