Samsung has recently launched their Galaxy S line-up and phones have been touted as the current best android phones in the market. The phone ships in India with Samsung’s in-house Exynos processor and the company has followed Apple suit by ditching the charger. The verdict of Exynos v/s Snapdragon is still open and how current Exynos 2100 stacks up to Snapdragon 888 remains to be seen. Performance of previous Exynos chip was dismal to say the least and it has lot of catching up to do, to be considered in the same league.
We’ll reserve our judgement on performance for now, but what has really baffled us this year is the confusing pricing strategy for Samsung Galaxy S21 series.
Before We begin our review on pricing strategy for Galaxy S21 let us look at the current prices, the entry level S21 is priced at INR 69,999 while S21+ and S21 ultra begins at INR 81,999 and INR 1,05,999 respectively. The aforesaid prices are for the base level variant and the price for S21 ultra can go upto INR 1,16,999.
Samsung flagship pricing have usually been at par with global market but things seem to have changed this year. Samsung Galaxy S21 starts at $800 (Approx. INR 59,200) in US while S21+ and S21ultra are $1000 (Approx. INR 74,000) and $1200 (Approx. 88,800) respectively. An interesting thing to note is that galaxy S20 line up started at $1000 previous year in US. The stark difference in prices in India & US could be for various reasons and India is tricky market when it comes to Mobiles and their prices but what I fail to understand is price drop in US market vis-à-vis same price in India compared to last year. Galaxy S21 is also an inferior device when it comes to hardware compared to its predecessor.
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Galaxy S20 was shipped with a glass back and Quad HD (4K) display while Samsung has ditched the glass back for plastic back and resorted to Full HD (1080p) display for galaxy S21. The benefits should ideally be passed on the consumers and evidently, they are in the US market but India still have to pay the same premium price like last year for arguably slightly downgraded hardware from previous year. Galaxy S21+ and S21 ultra still retains the glass back but S21+ has also been downgraded to full hd display while S21 ultra ships with quad hd display.
The pricing decisions has led us to question Samsung’s intent to take India as a serious market for their flagship devices and We believe Samsung is content with catering to budget centric consumers.