Samsung says demand for the Galaxy S4 is stronger than expected, and that’s causing some U.S. carriers to delay the phone’s launch.
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Today’s Mobile Minute:
- Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA have both pushed back the launch of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 smartphone because they don’t have the inventory. T-Mobile had planned to start selling the phone yesterday on its website but that didn’t happen. Sprint says it will sell the phone on its website starting Saturday, but won’t have the phone in stores until sometime after that. So it’s likely that even though Sprint may be selling the phone Saturday, they won’t be shipping it.
- Verizon Wireless is already selling the S4 on its website, but won’t ship the phone until May 30. AT&T has been selling the S4 for a week now, and says it will ship April 30. For Samsung, making the phone available to AT&T customers is key because AT&T is the only U.S. operator carrying the phone that looks to be the S4’s top Android competitor — the 16GB version of the HTC One.
- You may remember Samsung had some similar delays with the launch of the S3 last year. Since each carrier’s version of the device has to be thoroughly tested on that carrier’s frequency bands, getting all the phones ready to ship to all the carriers at once is difficult. But of course most of the phone’s components are shared by all models, so this inventory shortage is a sign of strong demand for the S4.
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