Timing is everything in the high-end smartphone world.
We now have a set-in-stone announce date of March 29 for the Galaxy S8, but the actual release date for the phone hitting retailers is still in flux. A report from VentureBeat claims Samsung may wait just shy of a full month after announcement to release the Galaxy S8 on April 29.
That’s a week later than the first expected release of April 21, which in itself is about a week longer than Samsung traditionally takes to get a phone out into the market after announcement. In the past few years, Samsung has done an incredible job of having pre-orders within a week of the launch event, with in-store availability a week after that.
While an extra week in the grand scheme of a 12-18 month phone lifecycle isn’t detrimental, it does give LG some hope of piling up G6 sales for just that bit longer without any competition. LG is expected to widely release the new G6 at the start of April, with initial leaks pointing to a U.S. release date of April 7.
Samsung will surely make up the difference in sales in short order, but in either case it means fans of the Galaxy S8 will have to wait just a little bit longer to get their hands on one.