Blog: The demand on the street for the Galaxy S4 and LG’s ambush marketing

Samsung’s newly launched Galaxy S4 is seeing some demand on the street.

I took to the New York streets to see whether anyone was actually paying attention to the Unpacked announcement of the Galaxy S4, Samsung’s successor to the popular Galaxy S3.

There were mixed results but in the main, most retailers polled said they had had queries about the device, and five of the six shops spoken to had heard of the Unpacked event on March 14th.

Two T-Mobile stores spoken to said there had been a lot of queries about the Galaxy S4, with people walking in off the street to ask about the new device. There was general confusion about the fact that yesterday’s event was an announcement, not a launch, they said, with the stores looking to stock end of April.  One store clerk said while there was no information about pricing as yet, he would imagine the S4’s price would fall between the Galaxy S3 at $US600 ( £397) and the Galaxy Note 2 at $US700 ( £463).

One Verizon Wireless store further out from Times Square, where the Unpacked event was broadcast live from Radio City, said they had had a fair few queries, but the AT&T store across the road said they hadn’t had many at all.

A Verizon Wireless store a few blocks from Times Square said they had had a few queries but not “a crazy amount”, and reiterated the device was not available yet.

A T-Mobile store clerk in a shop in Times Square attributed the interest to the fact that it was a big event with a lot of hype, and that the majority of the store’s sales were Galaxy S3s.

LG ambush marketing

Meanwhile in Times Square itself, LG did some sneaky ambush marketing – or maybe not so sneaky, come to think of it – by hiring out the screen above Samsung’s S4 poster and scrolling ads for its Optimus G that riffed on the ‘4’ theme, including ‘LG Optimus G is here 4 you now!’ and ‘It’ll take a lot more than 4 to equal one LG Optimus G.’ Ooh, snap.