Samsung’s Line Filling Strategy

• eCommerce

With the number of global smartphone users expected to reach 1.75 billion this year (surpassing the 1 billion mark in 2012) (emarketer), one technology company, Samsung, has managed to make some pretty large waves in the mobile phone market. This South Korean multinational conglomerate went from having almost no smartphone sales to selling over 50 million units per quarter over the course of two years.

Currently Samsung and Apple share most of the profits in the smartphone industry, with other vendors still trying to play catch up. Since the launch of the first iPhone in 2007, Apple continues to be more focused in its innovations and maintaining the premium brand tag, whereas a relatively late entrant into the smartphone business, Samsung has adopted the line filling strategy and offers a wide range of smartphones – largely considered one of the key reasons for their success.

Those who adopt this line filling strategy, cover almost all segments of the market, offering a greater number of product variations across price points and feature sets/specifications. Overall, a line filling strategy helps business increase the depth of the product mix, and gain greater market share and more substantial growth.

Samsung’s smartphones cover almost all every price bracket and display screen size. For e.g. the Galaxy smartphone, which is the flagship series of Samsung, has around 40 smartphone models covering different price brackets for different screen sizes in the US market alone. Line filling has not only helped Samsung make smartphones affordable but also increase its consumer base globally.

We know that Samsung is now trying to duplicate the same success with the tablet category as well.  It has recently launched the Galaxy Tab3 Lite, which is the fourth addition to its Galaxy Tab 3 line of products.

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