Smartphone giants fight for profits

BARCELONA

Smartphone giants released eye-catching new devices as the world’s biggest mobile fair opened on Monday, fighting for new ways to profit in a tougher market.

Besides a slew of sleek, new premier smartphones, the world’s biggest smartphone maker Samsung and its rivals unveiled an array of smart watches and bracelets to unlock new revenues.

The four-day Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, opens after a deceptively buoyant 2013, when sales surged 42.3 per cent to 968 million units.

The growth was powered almost entirely by developing markets, however, disguising a slowdown in mature markets such as Western Europe and the United States, which are the most profitable.

SAMSUNG LAUNCH

The big buzz at the conference was Samsung’s launch of its flagship device, almost certainly a Galaxy S5 smartphone rumoured to be equipped with a fingerprint scanner and larger screen.

The South Korean giant made about 30 per cent of all smartphones sold in the world last year, about twice the share of archrival Apple, which traditionally skips the annual industry fair. But Samsung is, nevertheless, scrambling for new revenue sources as competition in mature markets intensifies.

Samsung thus launched an updated smart watch, the Gear 2, on the eve of the gathering, adding new features and ditching Google’s Android in favour of its own operating system.

Featuring sports tracking software and a heart rate monitor, the Gear 2 marks an important and widely anticipated step towards independence from Android.