[Samsung Gear S] bennie joe:
Shows the errors of their thinking

Hi,

Why would they display a non-functioning watch and not release any info?

Here is my guess:

Samsung is convinced this is one of their new flagships and are likely very proud of it.

Their marketing department likely does not understand how foreign markets think (I work for a major foreign international company and ours does not either, so this is common).

So they won't necessarily understand that the lack of communication and dragging this out will cause people to give up waiting. They assume we will just wIt happily and patiently.

Their product development department went along with the Gear S, because it really is a cool idea, but not until they got finished with development and started marketing did they realize that not every country customarily offers the second SIM card option. While their product meets the interest of their end customers, the Gear S interferes with many of their US carrier partners mobile strategy. Those complications were likely just not anticipated by Samsung.

Marketing had sort of partially launched by that time ... But marketing would not be in charge of how to roll out training suppliers. That would be somebody in Sales. Again, thinking this is such a great product, they either assumed the partner sales staff would inform themselves about this awesome watch. They probably do not understand that in these AT&T/Best Buy, etc. stores we typically have low wage employees that may or may not experience high turnover rates. And have a plethora of products they need to be informed about. Samsung should have provided them with additional training and information, but there could have been political issues with the carriers that prevented them from releasing information, after all the second SIM card issue had not been resolved.

I have no idea how many people would have come in to see the watch at my local store, but I believe something about the set-up caused it to not charge unless properly seated. It is possible that they never noticed it was not charging, after all, it could have just been asleep. So I don't blame their AT&T partner staff, but this messed up launch is all on Samsung.

I checked the German sites after their official release on OCT 17th, none of the large retailers actually have it available, their websites state the watch should arrive after the first week in November.

I searched youtube for indicators anyone in the world actually purchased one. Normally with such high tech toys, there are unboxing videos out there - nothing.

I find that very strange that after having officially launched on OCT 11th in Singapore, it does not appear that 11 days later anyone in the world bought one and posted a note of it online somewhere...

I could be wrong and have simply not seen everything out there (I also don't read every world language needless to say, but am limited to 3).

For some countries this approach of not confronting issues with a customer may work. They may be happy just waiting.

For me, it really doesn't and since I am not alone, it shows that Samsung does not understand how many of us "tick".

If Microsoft comes out with a smart watch soon, I will be happy to compare it to the soon to be released Asus Zen Watch. And should the Gear S ever materialize before the apple watch I will give it a chance, but the days of me making an emotional decision with the purchase rather than an educated one are over, Samsung missed that boat!