Beleaguered Samsung shutters flagship London store amid falling sales

“What are Samsung Experience Stores?” Vlad Savov reports for The Verge. “Why, they’re a dying species, if the latest development in Samsung’s efforts to establish its own retail empire are any indication.”

“The flagship Samsung store in London, occupying a large and prominent spot at the Westfield Stratford City shopping center, has now been ‘permanently closed,’ ostensibly in response to the company’s slumping smartphone sales,” Savov reports. “Along with a centrally located Oxford Street shop, this was Samsung’s biggest — and thus most expensive and ostentatious — exhibition space in London.”

Savov reports, “Samsung made a big point of promoting its Experience Stores, making them the destination to get the very first Galaxy S4 and, later, S5 units sold in the UK, but excitement and sales have apparently petered out…”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Karma for Christmas!

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “M.” for the heads up.]

28 Comments

      1. Speaking of intelligent person…

        While in London, an iPhone user asked Siri for a Samsung store location to which Siri replied.

        “I have found 10 Samsung Experience stores, 4 of which are very clos…,
        I have found 9 Samsung Experience stores, 4 of which are very clos…,
        I have found 8 Samsung Experience stores, 3 of which are very clos…,
        I have found 7 Samsung Experience stores, 3 of which are very clos…,
        I have found 6 Samsung Experience stores, 2 of which are very clos…,”

        Poor Siri, she’s got her work cut out for her!

    1. While I enjoy a bit of schadenfreude as much as the next guy, sadly, Scamsung seems to still be doing well in Asia and people are still buying their top end phones (that cost almost as much as an iPhone). The little bit they ‘save’ will end up costing them more in the long run but many here can’t see the bigger picture.

      Oh well. At least in the more developed areas of the world, Apple is finally making the Korean copiers pay.

  1. I would love to see everything Samsung dropped in the U.S., and I mean any electronics, televisions, washer and dryers, etc. You can’t watch a commercial or see a print ad without their crap predominating.

  2. In the UK they also celebrate Boxing Day the day after Christmas. Originally it was the day you returned all the gifts you did not want. I guess Samsung is afraid that people will return all their stuff and they will be stuck with it.

  3. The collapse of Samsung’s smartphone sales has been surprising. I would love to see some market research on what led to this. Was it simply a form factor issue which evaporated with the larger iPhones? Was it the problematic Touch ID clone on Samsung devices? Was it the $1billion settlement Apple won against Samsung for copying Apple’s IP?

    Perhaps it was a little of all of this and perhaps it was also the very obvious difference in the atmosphere in the two phone maker’s stores. I was in NYC just after the launch of the iPhone 6. I thought I might pick up a phone at one of the NYC stores but, even a few weeks after the launch the lines outside all of the stores were intimidating. I walked past Samsung’s store in Soho, just around the corner from the Apple Store after filming the long line of iPhone 6 fans. The Samsung store was closed and there was no display in the window. And it was tiny by comparison with Apple’s store.

    Whatever the reason it proves, once again, that Steve Jobs was right about building the best products and charging a premium price.

    1. Let me try guess with my 2 cent worth of thoughts on the reasons of the Samsuck dumphones sales collapse are:

      – Poor operation system that require faster CPU clock speed + higher amount of RAM that results in high power consumption, lack of security, complex to use and lack of 64bit support (64bit is huge!).

      – There something cheaper brand like Xiaomi also able to provide the “just-as-good” experience.

      – People now usually compare Samsung and other Android dumphones to those cheap brands (Xiaomi , Huawei , Micromax etc), and non of those Android dumphones are meet the same level as iPhones standard.

      – People who look for premium product will go get an iPhone instead , especially there bigger screen size available.

      – People are just tried of the samsuck’s pre-installed malware.

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