Samsung wants to assure potential customers that the experience of using quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600-powered version of its new flagship smartphone Galaxy S4 would be no different than its Exynos octa-core processor-powered sibling.
The company's co-CEO, JK Shin
said at a US event that people won't notice any difference in terms of their experience with the phone and that Samsung selected processors that offered a similar experience.
He also clarified that the reason for US variants of the Galaxy S4 to feature Qualcomm's processor was not LTE compatibility but to make sure that Samsung has multiple sources for the phone. So it was only a sourcing issue to avoid supply shortages.
Samsung had adopted a similar strategy at the time of the Galaxy S III launch with the US version getting Qualcomm processors while the International version being powered by the Exynos 4 processor.
However, US based wireless carriers Sprint and T-Mobile have recently
informed that supply issues have snarled the US rollout of the Galaxy S4 which will go on sale later than expected, so it doesn't seem Samsung's strategy of having different versions to avoid sourcing issues seems to have worked out. Samsung, on its part, attributed the disruption to unexpectedly strong demand for the smartphone.
"Due to overwhelming global demand of Galaxy S4, the initial supply may be limited. We expect to fulfill inventory to meet demands in the coming weeks," the company said in a statement.
"Demand is far stronger than we had expected and as a result we are having difficulties in fully meeting initial supply requests," Lee Don-joo, head of sales and marketing at Samsung's mobile business, told reporters in Seoul.
He said the global launch would go ahead as planned on Saturday with carriers which had agreed to receive the initial supply.
It's worth pointing out that Samsung is
likely to release the Exynos Octa-Core processor powered version of the Galaxy S4 in India, when it launches it in a day.