If you haven’t already noticed, today is the first of February! For those of us in the mobile industry it’s our favorite month of the year. It’s when nearly every company (except Apple) that makes up one of the most exciting fields in consumer electronics gets together and shows off the devices that we’ll be talking about for the next 12 months. That’s right, it’s Mobile World Congress time, and we had some pretty high hopes that we’d be seeing Samsung’s newest flagship device at the event, but the South Korean handset vendor just issued the following statement:
“Samsung is looking forward to introducing and demonstrating exciting new mobile products at Mobile World Congress 2012. The successor to the Galaxy S2 smartphone will be unveiled at a separate Samsung-hosted event in the first half of the year, closer to commercial availability of the product. Samsung stays committed to providing the best possible mobile experiences for customers around the world.”
Now before you get upset, let us remind you about what happened in 2011. Samsung announced the Galaxy S II in February, it hit Europe and Asia in May, and then it finally came to America in September (Sprint), October (T-Mobile), and November (AT&T). This year Samsung would rather announce a device and then say something to the tune of “shipping next month!”, which would be a hugely welcome change since this industry is full of over promising and under delivering.
From a marketing perspective this is also a highly strategic move since Samsung wants to generate as much press as they can before Apple eventually shows off and ships the iPhone 5. The iPhone 4S shipped on October 14th, less than a month after the Galaxy S II finally landed on America’s shores. Assuming the iPhone 5 hits shelves in June, it would make sense for Samsung to want to keep their mouths shut until April or May.