2 strategies for Samsung Galaxy S6 to differentiate by focusing on business users

Samsung is driving uphill to maintain their lead in the consumer mobile market. Cheaper phones from Xaomi, Huawei, and other manufactures are driving the price of Android devices to $0 while gouging Samsung’s market share. And this is just from their fellow Android manufactures. Holiday sales of Apple iPhone showed resurgence due to iPhone’s bigger screen size.

One area where Samsung has yet to capitalize (and can do so rather easily) is to focus on a more premium and sophisticated buyer – business users. This approach lets Samsung justify a higher price for their devices, differentiate by features and apps, and allow Samsung marketing to focus on a customer willing to open their pocket books for perceived value in an era of zero-cost smartphones.

Strategy 1: Curated pre-installed business apps on Galaxy S6

Pre-install a curated a list of business apps on the Galaxy S6. Business users are pressed for time. Unlike consumers who actually browse mobile app stores, business users will not. Recommendations and reviews are the catalysts for professionals to download apps.

Samsung can lend a hand and establish instant biz cred by partnering with app developers who already have a business following. Ship the Galaxy S6 with select partner apps pre-installed in a separate Recommended Apps section on the phone. Emphasis on the word “separate”. Do not make the same mistake Dell did/does with PCs by bloating the phone with third-party apps that one must painstakingly delete should they not want them. The second-worst thing to happen with a new phone purchase is starting your phone and finding bloatware. The worst thing to happen is paying a premium price for a phone with bloatware.

Strategy 2: Tight integration with PC software that businesses use

What software do business people spend the majority of their day using on their PC? Email, browsing, CRM, scheduling, and task management are some common functions most professionals engage, regardless of the business they are in. Samsung should identify leading app developers in each of these business functions. Co-market or co-promote their apps. Rekindle the great Galaxy vs. iPhone commercials of the recent past (the ads were actually quite entertaining!) to create separation between Samsung Galaxy and the bevy of other Android phones in the market.

The best marketing is education. As part of their training regimen with retail outlets that carry Samsung devices, focus on the business application of Samsung phones and tablets. Make sure carrier store reps are versed in how Samsung devices work with leading business apps so professionals can extend functions from their physical office onto their virtual office on their devices. The goal is to educate people on how to get business done on mobile without skipping a beat or missing your physical office. When a person walks into a carrier store to ask about an Android device, all things business should only point to one direction on the rack – Samsung.

That’s value that business professionals will pay a premium to be associated with.  Pivot the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S6 phone and Galaxy brand to be the business tool that professionals must choose instead of the cheaper no-frills phones that consumers are swallowing in droves. Samsung needs to make the act of showing up to business meetings with a non-Galaxy phone to be perceived as a credibility issue. Remember early last decade when you weren’t a real business professional unless you had a BlackBerry?

Microsoft Outlook is the leading PC business productivity system

Outlook is included with Office, and Outlook is remarkably robust for 80% of everyday business needs. These two factors have given it the #1 Who’s Who rank in desktop business software. Outlook is ubiquitous because it’s bundled with every business version of Microsoft Office.

CompanionLink’s 20-year history with developing Outlook add-on software makes us privy to the choices and desires of the PC business audience. They use the Outlook to manage many aspects of their day. It is first-class software for email, calendar scheduling, task management, and contact management. We see behavioral patterns that Samsung can take advantage of.

Business Outlook users…

…manage both business and personal schedules using Outlook
…care about maintaining their client list with updated information
…rely on Outlook’s robust scheduling system to have an efficient day
…have a system to manage Outlook tasks to prioritize goals
…often use a task management productivity system (ie – Franklin Covey, Getting Things Done, Take Back Your Life)
…use email as a task list
…need to create or assign tasks from their email
…have years worth of client notes stored in Outlook
…have an intricate folder management system for emails that they can’t afford to break or lose
…are very concerned about data security and enjoy that Outlook data is stored locally
…prefer not to paying for a subscription to MS Office when they have been getting Office as a one-time purchase since its inception
…often rely on a shared system of calendars and tasks between their colleagues and/or assistants

How the Galaxy S6 can work tighter with Outlook

1. Update the Galaxy S6 email app to work more like K9 or Microsoft’s new Outlook app. Email must be a pleasure to manage. It is likely the first app business professionals engage every day.
2. Pre-install the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps.
3. Pre-install the DejaOffice app to integrate with and hold Outlook Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, and Notes on the Galaxy S6.
4. Pre-install the Dropbox app for file management.

These simple steps will allow the Galaxy brand to begin differentiating from other Android phones. Apple has notably been the platform that people spend more money on apps for. Why is this? Is it because they attract a more affluent buyer or because they attract a business buyer? Likely, it’s a combination of both.

Samsung Kies is free software that handles rudimentary Outlook integration as an after-thought. The core functions of the software are to transfer video and photos to the PC, apply device software updates, and back up contacts and text messages to the PC. Samsung should take this to the next level by supporting deeper integration with Outlook fields. What Samsung really lacks is a mobile app that is capable of holding all of the rich Outlook data. The Galaxy’s built-in contacts and calendar apps don’t map well with Outlook. Our own app, DejaOffice, on the other hand, offers a one-to-one map with advanced Outlook fields and data like Categories, Notes, recurring reminders, and sort options that match the desktop such as the File-As option in Outlook. This is really what business users are looking for instead of the novice contacts and calendar apps that ship with devices.

Samsung needs the business buyer in order to differentiate and validate a price greater than free for its phones. They need this buyer in order to survive the attack from both ends – cheap no-frills Android phones and Apple’s premium iPhone.

Samsung can start on March 1 with the Galaxy S6.