The Korea press, which in this case leaves a bit to be desired concerning objectivity, has indicated that sales of the Samsung S7 smartphone in the country have increased from ~10,000 units/day to 15,000 units/day between October 6 and 12, the week during which Samsung stopped selling the Note 7 in its home country. According to ‘anonymous sources’, local handset customers still remain loyal to Samsung products, especially given the incentives toward those products provided by Samsung as compensation for the Note 7 issues.
Samsung has also hinted about additional incentives for Note 7 buyers that will provide benefits to those customers when the company’s new flagship smartphone, the S8 is released in 1Q 2017, while the press is circulating a story about a group of Australian fisherman who would have been dead if not for the Samsung S7’s waterproof abilities (is that stink coming from the fish?) as they faced stormy weather offshore Melbourne. We note that the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7+ began retail sales in Korea yesterday, and despite Samsung’s dominance of its home market, the Samsung media machine seems to be working overtime to both contain the Note 7 damage and offset the iPhone release with positive news.
As an aside, even President Obama is making jokes about the Note 7 when referencing the Affordable Car Act at a recent speech. “When one of these companies comes out with a new smartphone, and it has a few bugs, what do they do? They fix it, they upgrade. Unless it catches fire and then they just, then they pull it off the market. But you don’t go back to using a rotary phone! You don’t say, well we’re repealing smartphones — we’re just gonna do the dial-up thing,” he noted. But the ultimate insult comes from a little company called Uniqfind (pvt) that has released a skin for the iPhone 7 that simulates a burning Note 7. Ouch! (…and it costs $24.99)