Samsung will be celebrating the news that it has sold more Android handsets in the US than all of the other Android manufacturers combined. The South Korean company will also look to maintain that dominance when it launches the Galaxy S24, S24 Plus, and S24 Ultra. And that could happen sooner than many expect.
Noted tipster IceUniverse has highlighted a Weibo post stating a launch date of January 18th, a month earlier than the schedule seen over the last few years. Previous Galaxy S launches have taken place at its “Galaxy Unpacked” event the week before Mobile World Congress – which runs 26th-29th February 2024.
Since 2018, Samsung has announced its flagship handsets in February with one exception. The Galaxy S21 was announced on January 14th and on sale two weeks later on January 29th, and this is the only time that any Galaxy S has been presented in January since the product range launched in 2010.
There has been discussion in previous years of Samsung “going early” with a Galaxy launch, but these have generally amounted to speculation around strategy. It’s worth noting that the 2021 launch was during the coronavirus pandemic, which precluded both travel and large-scale events, and as such, it is an outlier in more ways than one.
There are many reasons a launch could go early or late, and many factors that will need to be taken into account, not least the mammoth logistical operation needed to assemble enough phones for launch, but to have all the components and sub-assemblies ready at the correct time to keep feeding the just in time production line.
It’s not simple to accelerate a product’s retail release by four weeks this late into the process. Samsung may have decided that the 18th is the go date, with phones reaching stores in the week after the launch; it could go for an early reveal on the 18th – possibly to pre-empt sales of competitors’ handsets in the run-up to the holidays) and delay delivery until mid-February, or it could be that, just as in similar years, the discussions are ongoing, but the practicalities of decisions already made will kick in.
As the start of 2024 draws closer, more signs from the industry will point to one of the options above.
Now read more about the Galaxy handset that will launch before the S24 family…
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