Samsung launches the Galaxy S III Neo+ in China. And no, this isn’t a prank.

BY Stefan Constantinescu

Published 24 Jan 2014

The Galaxy S III is going to turn two years old in a little over a month, so one would think that a company would spend all their efforts trying to promote their new products, right? Not Samsung. They just launched a brand new Galaxy S III variant in China called the Galaxy S III Neo+. Not only does it use the new “Neo” suffix, but they’ve also added a plus sign for whatever reason.

How does the Neo+ differ from the original GS3? Except for dual-SIM card support, it’s pretty much the exact same phone. Same quad-core processor, same RAM, same battery, same 4.8 inch 720p AMOLED screen. Android 4.3 is pre-installed by default, which is nice, but … you tell me, why should this phone exist?

Earlier today, Samsung issued their Q4 2013 financial results, and the numbers show that Samsung sold less phones than they did in Q3, along with making substantially less profit. Is this strategy of releasing twenty different variants of the same phone starting to show its age? I think so.

The company needs to focus on competing with the local players in China that are eating their lunch. That means making fewer models and leveraging their company’s size to bring the cost of manufacturing down. That and they should take Coolpad to court, because all of their new phones and tablets are pretty much clones of the Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Tab, respectively speaking.