Big-Screen Time: Samsung Aims To Beat Apple To The Punch With New Galaxy S6 Edge+, Galaxy Note 5
Samsung Thursday unveiled its two newest big-screen smartphones, the Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Galaxy Note 5, hoping to match the popularity of Apple's iPhone 6 Plus in the phablet market.
The two 5.7-inch smartphones, which will be available in the U.S. Aug. 21, come with enhanced enterprise features such as an upgraded mobile security platform, Samsung Knox, as well as a new mobile payment system, Samsung Pay.
Charles King, analyst with market research firm Pund-IT, said it is "critical" for Samsung to demonstrate why it's different in the newly mainstream big-screen consumer market, as well as make a mark with enterprise features for potential business customers.
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"By getting out in front of Apple's upcoming launch, Samsung is taking the fight to Cupertino," he said. "Overall, Samsung measures up pretty well against Apple with very few blank spots in its portfolio. Plus, with its Edge … it's delivering offerings that are demonstrably different than Apple's iPhone. How that will play in the market is obviously uncertain."
Both 5.7-inch quad HD Super AMOLED smartphones run on the Android 5.1 operating system and are powered by 64-bit, 14nm Exynos 7420 processors. The Galaxy Note 5 is slimmer and thinner than the dual-edge screen Galaxy S6 Edge+.
But beyond the hardware specs, Samsung's newest flagship phones also contain specific features that are aimed at driving their popularity in the enterprise market.
Samsung's Galaxy Note 5 includes a new stylus S Pen, which allows users to use their phones to jot down notes, write emails and annotate PDF files. Samsung also is bringing multiwindow capabilities, which it recently unveiled in its Galaxy S6 Tab, to the Note 5, allowing users to pull up multiple tabs at once.
According to Samsung, the upgraded Samsung Knox makes both devices "ready for immediate enterprise adoption, with market-leading MDMs and Knox enhancements."
These new productivity features are aimed at giving Samsung an edge over competitor Apple. Samsung led the market in the second quarter with 21.7 percent market share with its premium Galaxy handsets, but Apple, which took 14.1 percent of the market share and whose iPhone shipments continued to dominate in China, trailed closely behind, according to research firm IDC.
"Samsung has a great thing going with their phones … [they are] cool technology and useful too," said Douglas Grosfield, president and CEO of Xylotek Solutions, a Cambridge, Ontario-based solution provider. "They really stand out well in comparison to the iPhone, though we all know how iconic the iPhone is. Feature sets are the differentiator these days, and both Samsung on the Android front and Apple with the current iOS version have similar approaches."
Samsung Pay -- the mobile payment system based on Burlington, Mass.-based company LoopPay -- is now integrated into the company's new smartphones. Samsung Pay, which will launch in September, works with both near field communication (NFC) technology and existing mag stripe readers, meaning it can operate in most retail stores.
Apple Pay, for its part, requires retail merchants to upgrade their checkout devices to be compatible with NFC, which allows two devices to communicate when they are in close distance.
But even more important to consumers are the security features behind the mobile payment system. Samsung Wallet is protected by Samsung Knox, fingerprint verification and digital tokenization, according to Samsung.
"Apple Pay and Samsung Pay are both late entries to the digital wallet market. … Of prime concern to anyone with this technology, must be security," said Grosfield. "I hope that being slower out of the gate means more attention to risk mitigation has been factored in."
PUBLISHED AUG. 13, 2015