An obituary, a Note and the fanfare
Tshireletso Motlogelwa | Saturday October 5, 2013 11:54
CAPE TOWN: If at the very moment Michelle Potgieter, the Director of Corporate Marketing and Communications at Samsung, brought the company's officials to the top table before the legion of journalists from across the continent, someone had brought a head on a stick as the bleeding evidence that indeed Blackberry was finished, no one would have been surprised.
Infact, the demise of Blackberry, once the unchallenged and unchallengeable force in the smartphone market in this part of the world, remained an elephant in the room, the more the Samsung people avoided the topic the more it became THE topic. At some stage, a journalist who could not help herself just had to bring it up, wondering loudly if the demise of Blackberry fortified the belief that Samsung, the South Korean juggernaut, had the African market to itself once and for all.
It was not a matter George Ferreira, the energetic Chief Operations Officer of Samsung Electronics Africa, would directly address. None of his colleagues - all smiley and triumphant - could talk about that, perhaps simply because the numbers told the story. Ferreira revealed that the company was the top overall mobile supplier by value and overall lead smartphone supplier by value.
The same week that Blackberry announced that they were dead in the water, up for sale to its biggest shareholder, Samsung gathered journalists and industry officials from the African region to wine and dine them and introduce Samsung's latest toys, The Galaxy Note 3, and the company's audacious foray into wearable technology, The Samsung Galaxy Gear.
The Galaxy Note came to this continent on the back of some edgy advertising campaigns. It was presented as a partner to those who wanted a bit more freedom to express themselves. Characterised by larger than normal screens and a pressure-sensitive 'pen' with handwriting recognition, and the processing brawn to match. The Note, as it was affectionately known, was marketed to the higher smartphone market but specifically to those with a freer spirit, compared to your ordinary smartphone largely corporate user.
It was after all for the smartphone user who wanted a bigger screen, the freedom to create content themselves. In other words, a Galaxy Note user would not just be a consumer but a creator of content, whether personally or even professionally. In Botswana, major networks have been offering the Galaxy Note 2 N7100.
At a point when I was coming towards my wits end with my Blackberry Bold, which seemed to have been made for someone in a suit with a brick for a brain, I thought a Note would be good for my use as a newspaper editor, someone who often jots down pieces of poetry whenever the muse strikes, and an ideas man.
The Galaxy Note worked for me very well. I could draft my deadline ideas for the frontpage on it and show to the design team. The idea that I could reduce the amount of trees I carried in the form of notepads intrigued me and drew me to the Note. My paperless world was blissful, but as they say, good things come to an end. I and The Note divorced a few months later when the small matter of data costs became a burning issue between us. As a prepaid customer unwilling to enter contract deals but looking for a serious smartphone, I was spending, at the time, upwards of P500 on data, the giant screen gobbling anything every time I checked a page. As someone pointed out when I asked about the high costs of data across the continent as an impediment, it is true that times have changed for the better since then. The introduction of data bundles which are becoming cheaper and cheaper as networks device ways of keeping their prepaid smartphone users will make a smartphone such as a Note a much more attractive proposition across the board.
Enter the Galaxy Note 3. It is a mean machine no doubt.
The Note was always a smartphone for the high-end portion of the smartphone user market. It will continue to be for the foreseeable future. However, by pairing it with The Gear, the thinkers at Samsung seem to be thinking of a much more tech-savvy crowd even within that top end market. The Samsung people say in due course you will be able to partner The Gear with other Samsung phones such as The Galaxy S series, although for now only The Note 3 has that functionality.
Picture The Gear as something like a smart watch that handles some of your handset functionalities. Like a mini handset on your wrist working in tandem with your phone. You can access contacts, a calendar and your inbox. The Gear is voice commendable. Furthermore, if you lose your phone, you could dial it through your The Gear to locate it. In South Africa, it will set you back R4,500 while in Botswana figures have not been availed yet.
There are a number of questions The Gear raises which may indicate the potential that the gadget may not realise as much success as Samsung would have hoped. One question is cost. If The Gear puts you back around R5,000, why would you buy that when you could get another smartphone for nearly just about the same price? At that price, does The Gear make it worthwhile as investment? The most important concern among journalists at the launch seemed to be that The Gear, for all the fancy marketing terms thrown about by the Samsung people, does not really make its case sustainable as far as functionality is concerned.
It is perhaps more of a geek's toy, at least in the southern African market. The reality is that a lot of Galaxy Note users, while still at the more adventurous end of the smartphone, may still find The Gear a bit of a stretch. I doubt if The Gear would get much traction in this market. Samsung, however, because of its image as a funky, streetwise brand, might just get away with The Gear.