Samsung’s Indestructible Phone

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Samsung’s indestructible Galaxy S5  Active has just hit the shelves at AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) stores. Both companies are about to find out whether anyone wants a smartphone that is almost bullet proof. The phone is relatively expensive at $199.99 with a two-year contract. That will make the product even more difficult to market.

AT&T has begun to promote the Galaxy S5 Active’s features. They do not seem terribly different from the standard Galaxy S5:

With shock resistant, water resistant, and dust proof3 casing, the Galaxy S 5 Active has a variety of features that make it the ideal fit for active lifestyles:

Press the convenience key on the side of the Galaxy S 5 Active to launch all of your apps related to outdoor activity, in one place for easy access. Track your heartbeat with the built-in heart rate monitor. Keep count of your steps throughout the day, earn medals, and request on-demand nutrition tips with S-Health 4.

With the exception of being unbreakable, the smartphone does not have more than other advanced smartphones and rudimentary sports watches and GPS devices.

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The smartphone market has become so fragmented and competitive that the market leaders have resorted to releasing a series of minor product upgrades. This may change if the new Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone 6 is a giant leap forward as early versions of the iPhone were. In the meantime, companies led by Samsung can barely entice the consumer with better cameras and fingerprint recognition. Most sales data show these features have not elicited enough excitement to drive extraordinary sales breakthroughs.

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The indestructible phone market is not crowded. As a matter of fact, Samsung appears to have most of this market to itself. That fact may be telling. Bullet-proof phones do not offer features that draw enough consumer attention to be anything more than niche products. And Samsung needs much more than that to capture customers’ imagination.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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