Samsung looking to leave Galaxy behind

Samsung has been tipped to ditch the storied Galaxy smartphone branding for its premium handsets.

According to South Korean website EToday (via 9to5Google), the tech giant is looking to change up its smartphone approach, potentially establishing a brand new premium smartphone brand and leaving the Galaxy name to lower-end devices.

The very first Samsung Galaxy phone hit the market more than 15 years ago, in June of 2009. Since then, the Galaxy brand has come to be synonymous with Samsung’s smartphones. The first Galaxy S phone arrived the year after.

That may indeed be the problem here. Galaxy is no longer seen as a premium brand, with the name now encompassing affordable smartphone lines like the Galaxy A and Galaxy M. Samsung’s intention, according to the report, is to create a new premium brand to mark its top end phones apart from the rest.

The situation is likened to that of another major South Korean company, Hyundai, which introduced the Genesis brand for its more luxurious cars to positive results.

In Samsung’s case, this would likely mean a new tag for the Galaxy S and Galaxy Z line-ups. This would seemingly focus the competition on Apple, which only ever releases premium iPhones, with the iPhone SE clearly distinguished as a (slightly) more affordable option.

While Samsung remains the biggest smartphone produced in the world for shipments, there’s increased competition from Chinese brands like Xiaomi and Vivo, while Apple continues to dominate that premium bracket.

Samsung switching to a new premium smartphone brand has already been alluded to by Samsung’s President of Global Marketing Center, Lee Young-hee. At CES 2024 she said “Galaxy has so many lineups that I understand people are expecting a new name when there is an innovative turning point”.

We continue to rate Samsung’s premium Galaxy offerings pretty highly, with the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra standing as the top pick on our Best Smartphones 2024 round-up. But it’s certainly the case that the Galaxy brand has become so widely used across the range, it’s pretty much meaningless by this point.