Samsung, the most popular Android smartphone maker, on Wednesday confirmed that it will be launching its next-generation Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus smartphones at Mobile World Congress, which takes place in Barcelona, Spain from February 26 through March 1, 2018.
ZDNet reported today that the company’s mobile boss DJ Koh said that its first flagship smartphone of the year will be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress trade show in February.
The sales date will be announced at the event. There were rumors that Samsung would unveil the phone at CES prior to the start of the show, but they didn’t pan out.
Koh added that Bixby 2.0 will be launched within the year and said that all Samsung devices will support the virtual assistant by 2020. “Many companies have AI competence, but not many have hardware competence,” the mobile boss stressed. “We started a little later than others but we are confident in offering the best experience for consumers.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkXUJKD28nk
The Galaxy S8 series was launched at Samsung’s Unpacked event in New York in March of last year and the phones went on sale the following month. If Samsung is unveiling the next Galaxy a month earlier, then sales may begin in March of this year.
This should give the South Korean conglomerate ample time to recover some of the sales it lost to iPhone X, which according to Kantar’s latest data was one of the top three best-selling smartphones in the US, the other two being iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus.
Earlier this week, Samsung posted a brand philosophy video (embedded above) to its YouTube channel which highlights its competitive advantages in an uplifting manner.
“Because you want a bigger screen, not a bigger phone, we took the display right to the edge,” the video says in a subtle dig at rival iPhone X, which has a fullscreen face (sans the notch), but its OLED panel is not curved around the edges like with the latest Galaxies.