On the evening of February 22, Samsung held the S22 series of the Bank of China press conference, bringing Samsung's flagship S22 series mobile phones for the beginning of the year. This year's S22 series is still a combination of small cups, large cups, and oversized cups, of which S22 and S22+ use a four-sided iso-wide design, and the S22 UItra, although the chin is slightly wider, is also more comprehensive, and it is not too much to call it an Android machine king.
The most surprising thing is that the oversized cup of Samsung S22 UItra actually built-in S Pen stylus, for a moment, the author felt that the Note series is back! It's recreated before our eyes in the form of an oversized cup of the S series.
Last year, I didn't see the new Note series of machines, and the Note 20 series released in 2020 has stood firm to the present, and the outside world has been rumored that Samsung will cut the Note series. However, with the S22 National Bank conference, the answer finally surfaced: Samsung did not really cancel the Note series, and it is very likely that the Note series was changed to the UItra model of the S series, making the Note new in the form of the S super cup.
Thinking about it this way, it is also reasonable, and the author has summarized the following reasons after careful consideration:
The Note series and the S series tend to homogenize
Mobile phone homogenization is almost a common problem faced by all Android manufacturers, because the current mobile phone design is similar, more and more "public model", and even some mobile phones are directly matryoshka dolls, it is difficult to play any tricks. Manufacturers in order to find a selling point is also want to break the head, some manufacturers in order to improve recognition and use some "bold, exaggerated" design.
Homogenization is also reflected in the different product lines of the same company, such as Samsung's S and Note series.
It is not difficult to find that the Samsung S series and note series mobile phones are gradually converging, and the large screen has long ceased to be the advantage of note, and the difference between the two in appearance and configuration is getting smaller and smaller. Compared with the S series, the Note series may be more square in the border and have an extra stylus. Therefore, the significance of the existence of the Note series is much smaller. Merging with the S series and appearing in the form of an S series of oversized cups may be a better destination for the Note series.
Folding screen will become a new industry outlet
For a long time, Samsung has been adopting a dual flagship strategy, that is, the first half of the S series, focusing on fashion and youth, and the note series in the second half of the year, focusing on large-screen business. The pair of Gemini stars in the digital circle are known as the "Android machine king", the evaluation is extremely high, and their industrial design was once considered the benchmark of Android mobile phones. The S series and note series are not only the best-selling Android high-end mobile phones, but also establish Samsung's high-end brand image.
As the time enters 2022, the new product form of folding screen is more and more recognized by more and more people, it is a "new species" between mobile phones and tablets, which is inevitably considered to be the future trend, and this is also the case.
IDC released a report that global shipments of folding phones (including clamshells and folding) totaled 7.1 million units in 2021, an increase of 264.3% compared to 1.9 million units in 2020. It can be seen that the future of folding screens has broad prospects. As the pioneer of folding screen mobile phones, Samsung's Z Fold and Z Flip series are the folding screen mobile phones with the highest shipments in the world, which accelerates the pace of Samsung's transformation of flagship strategy.
Note series is not irreplaceable, its product concept and large-screen business positioning can be folded screen mobile phone to undertake, in this case, Samsung canceled or merged Note series, in fact, to cater to the future development trend.
Note may have reached the end of its life cycle, and its end means that Samsung will truly enter a new era - the era of folding screens.
Get out of the supply chain dilemma and explore the new future of Note
Although Samsung is the upstream supplier, it does not mean that Samsung can fully achieve self-sufficiency. In the past two years, the global chip supply is tight, supply and demand are seriously imbalanced, and Samsung must balance the resource allocation problem of the dual flagship to reduce costs and maximize profits.
Qualcomm is a mobile phone chip supplier for many manufacturers, Samsung is also one of Qualcomm's large customers, last year Qualcomm faced a serious shortage of stock problems, and this problem can not be solved in a short period of time. Previously, there was supply chain news that the delivery time of Qualcomm's entire series of materials was extended to more than 30 weeks, and the trend of chip shortages will become the normalization of the past three years.
In addition to the impact of chips, the epidemic and extreme weather have also affected Samsung's production capacity. Last year, due to extremely cold weather, Samsung Electronics' chip manufacturing plant in Austin, Texas, usa, has been shut down for up to a month.
For various reasons, Samsung did not release a new generation of Note series mobile phones last year, and the year-long product "stop change" may completely change the future fate of the Note series.
In any case, the cancellation or merger of the Note series is regrettable. Note series as one of Samsung's most classic series, has created a precedent for large-screen smart phones, in that era of small size mobile phones everywhere, Samsung's original Note (5.3 inches) once released caused great controversy.
First Samsung Note
The original Note not only did not encounter Waterloo, but swept the world, and large-screen mobile phones appeared on the historical stage. Note has also slowly become Samsung's true machine emperor, positioning even higher than the S series.
Nowadays, the Note series product line is facing the fate of being cut, but its soul is still there, and the UItra oversized cup model of the S series will take over the SPen stylus and continue to write about the future of Samsung.