(
)
Galaxy S IV* (Bloomberg)
Samsung is looking to upstage Apple.
The South Korean electronics maker is expected to reveal its new Galaxy smartphone at a splashy event tonight at Radio City Music Hall.
With the growing success of its Galaxy line, Samsung probably figures it deserves center stage. Since 2010, the company has sold more than 100 million Galaxy S phones.
Still, some industry watchers are skeptical that Samsung’s skyrocketing success can be sustained and say the pressure is on the company to perform.
“What is so groundbreaking about the S IV?,” said Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research.
Analysts say Samsung has failed to “manage expectations” and is facing an Apple-like dilemma: how to live up to its own hype.
As if to underscore that point, a flash mob of tap dancers popped up in Times Square yesterday to herald the arrival of the new phone.
The marketing push alone for the Galaxy S IV shows how much the brand has riding on a successful debut.
Samsung has wielded aggressive marketing as a weapon against Apple. It was able to undercut Apple’s latest iPhone with commercials proclaiming “the next big thing is already here.”
A recent report showed that Samsung outspent Apple in marketing last year: $401 million to $333 million.
This launch marks the first time Samsung has had to show it can innovate on a yearly schedule, Chowdhry said.
“They have to do something dramatically different because this is a recipe everyone knows already,” he said.
By most accounts, the Galaxy S IV will not have a markedly different design than the Galaxy S III, which could mean incremental upgrades.
The real killer features are likely to be in the software, which is built on Google’s latest Android operating system.
Meanwhile, Phil Schiller, Apple’s marketing head, publicly blasted Android in an interview yesterday that seemed timed to its rival’s launch.
Android phones are all over the place from different manufacturers and the fragmentation ruins the experience, Schiller told The Wall Street Journal.