According to a Korea Herald report published last month, Samsung’s new design strategy moving forward has been dubbed ‘Design 3.0.’ Now, an unnamed source ‘close to Samsung’ has revealed to Android Geeks that the new design language will lead to the development of an aluminum-bodied Galaxy S5. One of the common criticisms of the Galaxy S4, despite its sales success, has been that it continues with a plastic design when competing high-end devices have adopted aluminum finishes.
Although HTC has been struggling with smartphone sales for the past 18 months, watching Samsung take a stranglehold on the Android smartphone market, its aluminum-clad HTC One has been its best-selling model in some time. A raft of positive reviews for the HTC One, many of which pointed to its aluminum design as significant advantage over the Galaxy S4, helped to propel it to over 5 million sales in its first month on sale.
The Apple iPhone 5, which features a thin aluminum unibody has maintained a strong sales lead over Samsung in the influential US market, with nearly double the market share. Further, Samsung’s shares shed $12 billion last week based on rumors of slowing Galaxy S4 sales, after an initially brisk launch. Much of the negative market sentiment was based on the introduction of cheaper, lower profit margin devices like the Galaxy S4 Mini and Galaxy S4 Active that could eat into Galaxy S4 sales. The introduction of a higher-end aluminum body device could help to reduce cannibalization of its flagship model as it would help to better differentiate its mid-level devices, thus preserving the sales of a higher profit margin device.