Samsung announces the Gear Sports
by Volker Weber
I don't really understand what Samsung is doing. This year they announce a new Gear Sports watch (left) which has the same CPU, memory and RAM like last year's Gear S3. It's just slightly smaller and lighter, with a smaller display, comes with a new design, and does not have WiFi. Compare this to last year's Gear S3 Frontier (right), where Samsung was very proud to have delivered a classic watch design. Forget the watchface for a second, and just look at the body. Wouldn't it be much smarter if they kept the design for a few years and upgraded the internals instead and deliver software updates for the recent models? I mean, like Apple is doing it?
Comments
Why should Samsung act like Apple in case of smart watches when they do not act like Apple in case of smartphones?
Because the Apple Watch is quite successful and the Gear watches are not.
They are still down the device sales path. Shortterm thinking vs. building an eco-system you can resell/upsell all the time. The second one is much harder to accomplish from a management perspective - you need to have a plan that spans multiple financial quarters and a clear vision for your whole product set. Non of that I can see at Samsung - same thing from printers to washing machines to phones to accessories. Maybe the portfolio is too big.