The Samsung S24 Ultra smartphone during Samsung’s presentation in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, … [+]
Google isn’t the only company to repeatedly slash the price of its flagship hardware, Samsung was just as aggressive when it came to slashing the price of the Galaxy S24.
Right now, Samsung has dropped the price of higher storage options on the Galaxy S24 Plus and Ultra models. That means you can pick up the 256GB option for either model for the price of the 512GB unit – knocking $120 off both phones.
That’s along with increased trade-in prices for older devices, which are up to $600 and $750 for the Plus and Ultra, respectively. These are two of the many sales, discounts, vouchers and offers that Samsung has been offering since the devices launched in January.
Samsung exclusively told me last month that it’s giving away the Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus for free with qualifying TV purchases. It was also bundled with the new Galaxy Tab S6 Lite with the Galaxy S24 purchased in April.
A month earlier, the Korean company had slashed 10% off all Galaxy S24 handsets as part of a ‘7 Days’ promotion, along with repeated seemingly random price cuts over the past six months and giving away a year’s free Disney Plus subscription to select Galaxy owners . Throughout it all, Samsung is offering a 5% discount on all purchases made through the official app.
Samsung is no stranger to aggressive marketing practices and targeted discounts to disrupt competitors. Back in 2015, the company ran a cheeky “test drive” campaign that allowed iPhone users to trade in their Apple phones for the Galaxy Note 5 for a month to see if they’d like Samsung’s version of Android. As I reported at the time, it was popular and persuasive, to say the least some iPhone users cross the floor.
Samsung is still in a criminal case with its arch nemesis iOS. The test drive circuit has evolved into a “try the galaxy” app that can be installed on the iPhone so that iPhone users can see what Galaxy AI is all about. This is a key difference between the two ecosystems because Apple has yet to release its AI toolkit. Samsung has also just released a new video poking fun at Apple’s ill-received iPad ad – another popular pastime from the Korean firm. Old tricks die hard.
I suspect that these repeated discounts from Google and Samsung were popular because neither company is going out of business. With Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked Paris summer event in July, the company will almost certainly have more serious deals up its sleeve.
Expect the Galaxy Ring to be loosely bundled with new foldable phones and the existing S24 lineup, as well as aggressive trade-in prices for older iPhones. I wouldn’t be surprised if the price of the Galaxy S24 jumps at the July event, perhaps to around the $200 discount we usually see during Black Friday sales. Pre-order prices for the new Z Fold 5 and Flip are likely to be just as generous.
All of this is happening in tandem with the mass deployment of generative artificial intelligence from major tech manufacturers. There is an intense battle to assimilate as many people as possible into their respective ecosystems, because companies believe that AI-powered features may in the future lead to subscribers paying for those same features. Just look at Samsung’s warning that its Galaxy AI toolkit is only free until the end of 2025.
If artificial intelligence is an inflection point in the history of technology, along with the invention of the Internet, as some believe, then the aggressive pricing of the hardware that acts as a gateway to it makes perfect sense.