Samsung Releases Galaxy S21 Officially
Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) released the latest in its flagship Galaxy S series in 60 countries on Friday, with actual sales beginning in South Korea, North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia, while availability will increase to 130 countries by the end of February. In South Korea, Samsung is both extending the pre-order period to 2/4/21 due to a lack of available product and is offering a 3 day ‘rental’ program that allows consumers to try out the phone before buying.
Samsung is expected to ship ~26m units of the S21 series this year, which is roughly the same as last year’s S20 series, which was not considered a major success internally, as the company expects COVID-19 will still limit in-store sales this year. The top model however, the S21 Ultra, is expected to represent ~30% of shipments this year (8m units) which is above last year’s version, which proved more popular than the company had expected, leading to shortages. The S21+ is also expected to ship ~8m units, while the least expensive S21 is expected to ship ~10m units.
Samsung has ordered slightly more components for these phones than last year despite the flat sales expectations as some components are in short supply, including Samsung’s internally produced Exynos processor, which replaces the Qualcomm (QCOM) Snapdragon 888 in the series’ international models (US and China models use Qualcomm). As Samsung’s foundry has relatively limited additional capacity, the Exynos has to compete with other components that Samsung produces and could potentially be a limiting factor for the S21 series this year.
The US ban on Huawei (pvt) will take its toll this year, reducing Huawei’s smartphone sales considerably, already forcing the company to sell its lower-tier brand Honor (pvt) recently. This incentivizes other brands to step up their efforts to capture some of Huawei’s lost share, increasing competition and likely adding to Samsung’s relatively conservative stance on Galaxy S21 shipments this year. Samsung did reset prices for the S21 series by $200 on each model (lowest memory configuration), which amounts to a 20%, 16.7%, and 14.3% reduction respectively, but still faces increasing competition, particularly from Apple (AAPL), who was second only to Huawei last year in 5G smartphone shipments, beating Samsung by over 10m units, despite having released the iPhone 5G series in October.
Samsung is expected to ship ~26m units of the S21 series this year, which is roughly the same as last year’s S20 series, which was not considered a major success internally, as the company expects COVID-19 will still limit in-store sales this year. The top model however, the S21 Ultra, is expected to represent ~30% of shipments this year (8m units) which is above last year’s version, which proved more popular than the company had expected, leading to shortages. The S21+ is also expected to ship ~8m units, while the least expensive S21 is expected to ship ~10m units.
Samsung has ordered slightly more components for these phones than last year despite the flat sales expectations as some components are in short supply, including Samsung’s internally produced Exynos processor, which replaces the Qualcomm (QCOM) Snapdragon 888 in the series’ international models (US and China models use Qualcomm). As Samsung’s foundry has relatively limited additional capacity, the Exynos has to compete with other components that Samsung produces and could potentially be a limiting factor for the S21 series this year.
The US ban on Huawei (pvt) will take its toll this year, reducing Huawei’s smartphone sales considerably, already forcing the company to sell its lower-tier brand Honor (pvt) recently. This incentivizes other brands to step up their efforts to capture some of Huawei’s lost share, increasing competition and likely adding to Samsung’s relatively conservative stance on Galaxy S21 shipments this year. Samsung did reset prices for the S21 series by $200 on each model (lowest memory configuration), which amounts to a 20%, 16.7%, and 14.3% reduction respectively, but still faces increasing competition, particularly from Apple (AAPL), who was second only to Huawei last year in 5G smartphone shipments, beating Samsung by over 10m units, despite having released the iPhone 5G series in October.
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