Last week, the new Galaxy Z TriFold sold out in a day.

Online sales were closed after just 5 minutes...

And at Samsung's offline stores in Korea, long lines formed of people wanting to buy this foldable smartphone.

Early reviews of the device were also positive.

5 minutes! Wow!

Should the team celebrate victory?

Seems a bit early.

The nuance is that although the smartphone sold incredibly fast, Samsung said back in early December that the model has a high production cost, leaving almost no room for profit.

Procurement prices for processors, memory, and OLED panels are rising year over year by 20-75%.

Samsung says it is ready for this and plans to expand internal production to reduce costs.

Top management proudly states:

The current price for customers was achieved with great effort.

We cut costs on everything possible. And we will continue to invest in this further.


A serious approach to the issue

BUT!
Wait!

What is the retail price?
Drumroll - $2430

Is that expensive or cheap?

The closest competitor in the tri-fold niche (Chinese Huawei) sells its Mate XT for $2830

+$400 to the Korean's check
(14% by the way)

And it sells well

In the first half of 2025, they shipped 400,000 units.

If the pace continues, by the end of the year sales could reach 800,000+ devices.


So why is Samsung engaging in such price dumping?

- Its brand is fine
- The new product turned out great
- Demand is fantastic

Because if Samsung achieves similar sales volume but at a price $400 lower per smartphone,

then the Korean giant will lose approximately $320 million/year in additional profit.

Even for Samsung, that's not insignificant...

I'm sure my colleagues can calculate better than me. And they all understand this.

Apparently, it's about the very goal of their pricing strategy

It seems Samsung's pricing positioning is aimed not at profit and skimming from a successful product,

but at increasing market share and maintaining technological leadership.

Investors generally respond very well to such news. And this boosts the company's stock prices.


Let's see how this pricing model works out further...
It's unlikely they can ignore the issue of sales margin forever.

What useful insights can be drawn from this case?

1) Excessively high product sales are also an anomaly

(Need to dig deeper. Perhaps the price was set incorrectly and we are losing profit)

2) The business goal is always paramount

(What we want to achieve greatly influences what pricing strategy and prices we choose)

So...

Record. Analyze. Apply.