While accountants in Seoul may be wringing their hands, Samsung has put on a buoyant public face in the U.S. as its new phones packed with innovative features continue to gobble more of the domestic market share.
The marketing change is perhaps best reflected in a series of recent ads — timed for the release of Apple’s iPhone 5 last month — that poke fun at customers lined up outside an Apple Store and eagerly anticipating what Samsung considers to be only incremental changes. In the ad, Samsung phone owners, all young and hip, are shown casually lauding features in the new Galaxy S3 model that aren’t available on iPhone 5.