Samsung has sent out the invitations to its ‘Unpacked5′ announcement at Mobile World Congress (MWC) dropping a big hint that the Galaxy S5 should make its debut at the show on February 24th. The February announcement would likely mean a late March or an early April release date at the networks.
Samsung has traditionally used its first ‘Unpacked‘ event every year to introduce the new flagship smartphone in its Galaxy range and the inclusion of the not-so-subtle numerical hint5 would certainly indicate a Galaxy S5 announcement. Last year’s ‘Unpacked Episode 1’ invitations carried the tag line ‘Be ready 4 the next Galaxy’ which hinted at the arrival of the Galaxy S4, so the assumption is not without precedent. It should however be noted that the South Korean company has only ever launched one other flagship smartphone at MWC, the Galaxy SII in 2011, preferring instead to hold its own events after the Barcelona show.
Although Samsung is the largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, it’s the lucrative high-end smartphone segment, where it faces fierce competition from Apple’s iPhone and resurgent competitors like LG and Sony, that brings in most of its profits. Last year’s Galaxy S4 got off to a blistering start sales wise, blowing away all of Samsung’s previous records, but sales dwindled as consumers complained that it was too similar to the Galaxy SIII that had preceded it. The head of Samsung’s mobile business, Lee Young Hee, even went so far as to tell Bloomberg “When we moved to S4 from S3, it’s partly true that consumers couldn’t really feel much difference between the two products from the physical perspective, so the market reaction wasn’t as big”.
We’ve already taken an educated guess as to what Samsung will have in store for us with the Galaxy S5 hardware wise but the bigger story could be the re-invention of Samsung’s TouchWiz software customisation of Android which have already been the subject of multiple leaks online. Whatever happens, we’ll be in Barcelona later this month to bring you all of the news as it unfolds live.
Source: Samsung (Google+)
