There are few companies that can boast a global brand presence as big as Samsung’s. The South Korean giant has their hands in just about everything these days, with televisions, washer machines, and smartphones accounting for their billions in revenue every year.
But despite their best marketing efforts, Samsung may not have much pull in Japan, where total mobile sales account for barely 5.6% of smartphones sold in the country. While it’d be easy to assume this could have something to do with the Japanese mostly favoring national brands like Sharp, Fujitsu, or Sony, keep in mind Apple occupies nearly 40.8% of the market. In any case, that’s not about to stop Samsung from who will be bringing their new Galaxy S6 flagship to the country on April 23rd.
What’s interesting is Samsung’s branding — at least for the NTT Docomo model — has been completely stripped from the phone, as pointed out by The Korea Herald. The S6 Edge model is completely devoid of any Samsung branding on the front, with only the carrier name and “Galaxy” branding on the back. The regular S6 model has Docomo’s branding on the front (where the Samsung logo would normally go) and once again, only “Galaxy” on the back. No S6, no S6 Edge — none of that.
According to Samsung, they feel the Galaxy brand has been “well established in Japan” but declined to comment further. While it’s not uncommon to find Japanese carrier Docomo de-brand handsets in favor of their own logo (it was the same case for last year’s Samsung Galaxy S5 and even their Note line in Japan), you’ll find Sony’s Xperia line was left alone. Go figure.
