Re: Back to basics?
"isn't is about time they offered two top enders, one in the mould of the S5, and the other a sealed battery, fixed storage, metal chassis device to take on the Sony and HTC top enders?"
Erm...what? You think the best thing for Samsung to do is remove one of the few things that differentiates the S5 from the rest? Why would they want to do that?
As far as I'm concerned the removeable battery is a major plus point for Samsung (the memory card support also helps, but that's not so rare). Over time I have found the performance of the battery in every portable gadget decreases - at least with a Samsung it's a quick, easy and cheap fix.
Personally, I value that over the style of the Sony/HTC competition, but of course other people have different priorities. Personal choice and all that.
Aside from that, I work for an electronics manufacturer, and I can tell you that the logistics and costs involved would be immense, and its questionable at best whether there would be any benefit for Samsung.
Firstly, they would probably have to add another production lines. It would be nigh-on impossible to make 2 phones which are constructed in fundamentally different ways on the same production line.
Next they would have to ship it, market it, set up the commercial agreements etc
They would have to employ ever more staff to manage god knows how many different sku's - remember that for every different configuration - whether it's just a different colour or more memory etc has to the - the costs associated with stock mangement, supply chain, forecasting etc are huge.
Then, once they have manufactured it and shipped units around the globe, they would then have to market it. And to do that they would have to create arguments agaist the removeable battery design that is unique to them (at least at the top end of the market). so they would run a high risk of cannibalising sales of their own phones, not necessarily taking sales away from competitors - so they run a big risk of reducing their own profitability.
All of this to sell a me-too phone into a market they already dominate.
Given that Samsung are so successful, surely the question should be why the other manufacturers are't creating phones that compete with Samsung, not the other way around?