Sean Nero

With claims that it now has the lead in the lo­cal re­tail mar­ket for mo­bile hand­sets, tech­nol­o­gy-gi­ant Sam­sung might be con­sid­er­ing slash­ing con­sumer prices in T&T to boost sales and carve out an even larg­er share of the mar­ket.So said Wev­er­son Cor­reia, sales man­ag­er for Sam­sung Caribbean at yes­ter­day's launch of the new Sam­sung Galaxy S4 held at Prime Restau­rant at In­vaders Bay, Wood­brook.He was re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the me­dia as to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­duc­ing prices of Sam­sung de­vices.

"We are do­ing well as it is now. Go­ing in­to these en­gage­ments with our re­tail­ers, def­i­nite­ly our de­vices be­come more af­ford­able. That will al­low us to grow much more of the mar­ket share here in T&T. Over the years, we had a very low pres­ence here of five to six per cent. To­day, with the changes that we have done, we have been able to work clos­er with the car­ri­ers and were able to achieve a 40 per cent mar­ket share," he said.

Cor­reia added: "We are not stop­ping there. We have a great team of R&D be­hind us. T&T hap­pens to be one of the mar­kets we want to be in con­stant­ly. We are do­ing very well (in T&T). We are pleased with the num­bers we are pulling out in each and every mar­ket. We are hap­py with the big­ger coun­tries, we are hap­py with the Caribbean. In T&T, the changes that we have been able to make are out­stand­ing; and T&T is al­so very im­por­tant to us–the pur­chas­ing pow­er."

Cor­reia re­mained tight-lipped when asked how many units bmo­bile, Dig­i­cel and oth­er re­tail­ers com­bined were mov­ing for Sam­sung lo­cal­ly, how­ev­er, he did re­veal that sales con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the com­pa­ny's healthy Caribbean bot­tom line.Ques­tions about the Sam­sung's re­sults re­gion­al­ly for 2012 were not en­ter­tained.The new Sam­sung Galaxy S4 will be avail­able at bmo­bile ef­fec­tive this Sat­ur­day and two days lat­er at Dig­i­cel stores.

This week there will be launch­es in Aru­ba, Ja­maica, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Puer­to Ri­co, re­spec­tive­ly. The com­pa­ny's tar­get mar­ket is both cor­po­rate and the youth.Cit­ing the savvy na­ture of the youth mar­ket, the smart­phone has fea­tures that rep­re­sent the call of the con­sumer for a de­vice that would be the equiv­a­lent of a life com­pan­ion, while in­cor­po­rat­ing tech­nol­o­gy se­cu­ri­ty so­lu­tions favoured by the com­pa­ny's cor­po­rate clien­tele.