Competition in Thailand's premium smartphone market looks set to ramp up after the new Samsung Galaxy S8 was released on Friday.
Despite sales of premium smartphones accounting for 15-20% of total handset sales each year, the market generated higher profit margins for smartphone makers.
Chinese handset makers like Huawei, Oppo and Vivo are also trying to increase their presence in Thailand's lucrative, premium phone market.
As the pace of innovation continues to abate, sales of smartphones in Thailand have been slowing down, seeing only single-digit growth with annual handset sales of 18-20 million units due to high penetration rates and lengthening replacement cycles, said Wichai Pornpratang, corporate vice-president for IT and mobile communication at Thai Samsung Electronics.
But he said the innovative Samsung Galaxy S8 is expected to boost the local premium smartphone market this year. Samsung is gearing up its marketing and promotional activities to boost sales of the new phone.
Mr Wichai said Thailand's smartphone penetration rate has hit a high level of 80%, with the replacement cycle for smartphones extending to 18-24 months.
The Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus are scheduled to be sold in the Thai market on May 5, priced at 27,900 and 39,900 baht, respectively.
The Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus feature a 5.8- and 6.2-inch display, respectively. The phones use a bezel-less design with an on-screen home button and infinity display, providing for a larger screen size.
Based on a survey conducted by Nielsen with 705 respondents, Mr Wichai said the company had found that Thais spend an average of four hours per day on their smartphones. On average, 75 minutes are spent on making telephone calls, 45 minutes for watching entertainment programmes and 24 minutes for browsing the internet.
According to another survey of 1,525 respondents conducted by the National Institute of Development Administration, 85.8% said they watch reruns or rebroadcasts of programmes.
The most popular rerun content is viewed on YouTube at a rate of 73%, with Line garnering 36%, websites 22.3% and applications 4%.
Mr Wichai said smartphone users are increasingly demanding faster mobile networks to enable them to better stream video-on-demand.
Samsung plans to relaunch the Samsung Note 7 smartphone by the second half of 2017.