In an interview today (March 13th) at the opening of pre-orders for Samsung's new flagship Galaxy S26 series, Chen Chi-meng, General Manager of Samsung Taiwan's Mobile Communications Business Division, stated that the Galaxy S26 series has performed exceptionally well in Taiwan's pre-order market, with an overall growth of 25% compared to the previous generation. The online store benefited from an exclusive strategy, experiencing a 2.8-fold increase, while Samsung's own channels, such as the Samsung Smart Store, saw growth exceeding 50%, and telecommunications system operators maintained a 20% growth rate.
Ultra models hold an absolute advantage, with large capacity and special colors providing strong momentum for online stores.
Observing the sales share this time, the Galaxy S26 Ultra demonstrates absolute product appeal:
• Model distribution:The Galaxy S26 Ultra accounted for 83% of all pre-orders, the Galaxy S26+ for 14%, and the standard Galaxy S26 for the remainder, indicating that most consumers opted for the top-of-the-line Ultra version when purchasing the device.
• Capacity preference:Most consumers still opted for the 512GB version, and chose Samsung's "small to large" upgrade plan (which allows users to upgrade to a 1TB version) for the new phone, accounting for as much as 85% of the market. However, the 1TB version performed better than expected, even quickly running out of stock during the initial pre-order period. Samsung Taiwan is expected to restock the purple and black versions of the 1TB version by the end of March.
• Color options:Purple became the most popular color scheme this time, accounting for 35%, while black and blue were equally popular, and white styles consistently attracted many female consumers.
• Online store strategy:The remarkable growth of the online store is mainly attributed to the 1TB large-capacity version and the online exclusive special color, with the special color and the 1TB capacity version accounting for a total of 65% of the online store's sales.
Cross-industry collaborations and the "N-1" long-tail strategy have taken hold, driving sales across the entire ecosystem.
In addition to the phones themselves, Samsung Taiwan has also achieved good results in its overall ecosystem and marketing strategies:
• Wearable device performance:Driven by the new phones, wearable devices performed exceptionally well, especially those with exclusive colors (such as Misty Gold), with headphones (Galaxy Buds series) achieving an astonishing growth rate of 240%.
• Social Media and Marketing Popularity:This collaboration with the South Korean girl group TWICE's concert successfully generated a huge amount of buzz on social media, not only receiving positive feedback from fans but also attracting more consumers by combining it with channel discounts.
• Long tail effect (N-1 strategy):Samsung Taiwan continues to implement the "N-1" strategy in its online channels, allowing previous generation models to continue to be sold and extending the sales cycle of previous product lines to one year (until the end of this year), thereby covering consumer demand in more different price ranges.
Galaxy AI upgrades have yielded noticeable results, successfully increasing job-hopping rates.
Chen Qimeng pointed out that the upgrades to the hardware and Galaxy AI in the Galaxy S26 Ultra have been "very noticeable" to consumers. In terms of functionality, consumers have given high praise to the new features such as Smart Privacy, eSIM, Horizontal Lock Recording, and Smart Sticker Generation.
These innovative features and high capacity settings not only solidified existing Samsung fans but also successfully attracted users from other brands to switch sides; compared to the previous conversion rate of about 8% from Apple to Samsung, the Galaxy S26 series has successfully increased the conversion rate to 13%.
Undeterred by rising memory costs, a complete supply chain is the biggest source of confidence.
In response to recent market concerns about rising costs of components such as memory chips, Chen Chi-meng emphasized that Samsung Taiwan follows the global pricing strategy of its headquarters in product pricing. He further pointed out that Samsung possesses a highly integrated vertical supply chain for components, which, compared to other competitors facing future component supply shortages or cost pressures, will allow Samsung to demonstrate greater resilience and a competitive edge in the market.
The competition in the foldable phone market in the second half of the year is welcome, and Samsung is emphasized to have a considerable advantage.
Regarding the expectation that more brands will launch new foldable phones this year, especially Honor, which is expected to join the competition in the Taiwan market, is preparing to launch a new foldable phone, and Apple is also rumored to be preparing to launch its first foldable phone this fall, Chen Qimeng said he is happy to see more brands join the competition, but also revealed that Samsung still has a considerable advantage in foldable phones. Even with the current significant impact of memory supply shortages, Samsung is not affected overall because it has its own complete component supply chain resources.
