Samsung’s first flagship smartphones of 2023 bring in tow a slew of new features. As expected, Samsung has thrown all its might into the S23 series and left no stone unturned to catch the fancy of premium buyers in India. Not only that but one of the significant things about the Galaxy S23 series is that they are being manufactured in India.
Aditya Babbar, senior director, mobile business, Samsung India says that the S23 series “has seen a generational leap, they are giving a very differentiated experience to the consumer.” In other words, a better phone than the Galaxy S22, hence the price difference. Babbar says that the base model price has gone up by 4%, which isn’t a significant hike. The S22 256GB variant was priced Rs 76,900 and the S23 starts at Rs 76,900 – which to be fair is a pretty good deal from Samsung.
Babbar is unequivocal in his praise for the Samsung S23 series cameras. For instance, the 200MP sensor that the S23 Ultra packs is built for nightography – Samsung’s product presentation and messaging in the marketing campaigns focus on the cameras. “The front camera, the dual pixel technology allows you 60% brighter selfies and faster autofocus. We have built-in Astro photography into the camera’s raw images to give consumers a completely differentiated camera experience,” says Babbar elaborating on the camera prowess of the S23 series.
Samsung is also touting the S23 series as a gaming-centric phone – something it rarely has done in the past, especially with its S-series of phones. And that’s because the Snapdragon 8 Gen Galaxy processor is a custom design chipset. “What changes for the customer is 30% plus GPU and CPU performance and 49% plus NPU performance,” he says, before adding that the phones have got ray tracing (which is normally not available in a smartphone) – which gives a “real life gaming experience on a phone.”
Babbar also says that the built-in adaptive power makes power management much better for gamers. If that wasn’t enough, then there is a built-in vapour cooling chamber. And if you’re wondering that these features are reserved for the most expensive S23 Ultra, then Samsung hasn’t cut the corners in the lesser premium variants – S23 and S23+. “Samsung’s endeavour has been to make technology more accessible and affordable, and these two words are very important to us,” explains Babbar.
Samsung Galaxy S23 series brings a “generational leap” in all aspects: Aditya Babbar
It may look odd to attach the word affordable to phones that cost north of Rs 75,000 but Babbar says that Samsung is offering trade-ins like upgrade bonus to customers. He also argues that customers have different needs. For S23, Samsung is offering EMIs as low as Rs 5,200 per month. And then there’s Samsung Finance – a rather important pillar in Samsung’s scheme of things. Samsung is also giving Galaxy S23 buyers benefits worth Rs 52,000.
Samsung now has 67,000 stores offering Samsung finance. “50% of our consumers are new to credit who have never taken a loan, even to those consumers we are giving 15 months EMI. We run our finance program ourselves now that’s where it has given us great growth last year in non-metro also,” he adds.
Babbar claims that for the S23 series, Samsung’s pre-booking numbers are close to 1.4 lakh – which certainly sounds impressive. The average selling price, according to Babbar, is around Rs 1 lakh for the S23. In other words, in one single day, Samsung has done Rs 1,400 crores of pre-bookings.
Babbar says that Samsung’s growth rate in the flagship segment in 2022 was around 70% and he shares some more numbers. “The market has grown as per the estimate in metros at 74%. We have grown at 124%. And if I talk about non-metro, the market has grown at around 107% and we have grown at 179%,” he says.
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