Samsung has suffered a major setback in its efforts to relaunch the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 in South Korea, although the company has not dwelled much on the reasons.
Launched back in August, the Galaxy Note 7 has been a major headache for the company with issues surrounding the battery leading to an expensive recall. Samsung claimed that the cost of this recall would run into $ 1 billion, but they had no other alternative than to replace the units free of charge. The recall program may have completed in some countries, but it certainly has not been popular in South Korea – the home of Samsung.
South Korea has witnessed just 200,000 applications from customers asking for a replacement unit. Samsung believes that there is still a significant number of affected phones out in the market. It was previously announced that the Galaxy Note 7 sales would resume from September 28. The latest confirmation from Samsung is that the date has been pushed back to October 1 in order to give more customers an opportunity to apply for a replacement.
The Galaxy Note 7 was seen as one of the best phones made by Samsung. Apart from a substantial improvement in terms of design, the phone also came with a curved screen to mark the end of a normal display on the Galaxy Note series. The 5.7-inch screen with a curved display was capable of putting most of the screens to shame with its QHD resolution and higher contrast levels thanks to the super AMOLED technology. This aspect made the Galaxy Note 7 considerably superior to the iPhone 7 Plus even after its launch, but the suspended sales coupled with a hit to the reputation means that Samsung may struggle to match the sales figures of the Apple iPhone 7 Plus at least for 2016.
Samsung has been in the process of giving an update to existing owners. It was primarily to prevent the battery from charging to its full capacity, only upon which there were reported explosions. Samsung made it a priority to make the Galaxy Note 7 significantly better than the iPhone 7. Hence the urgency shown by the company in parking features was not meet with an equal amount of urgency in terms of maintaining quality. The company has now extended the replacement period for the Galaxy Note 7 units in South Korea up until September 30.