In early April we posted a report titled "Samsung has one Smartphone Strategy for 2016: Slash Prices." In that report we noted that the Wall Street Journal made it clear that Samsung lost its number one status in China, India and other countries last year and continuing until this day. How are they dealing with that? Massive price cuts. In the US it was in the hidden form of a 2-for-1 sale. Yet in India, it's just in-your-face aggressive price cutting. Today we're learning that they're going after Apple's iPhone 6 line aggressively with a new smartphone design that almost mirrors Apple's iPhone as noted above in our cover graphic.

Business Insider reports that "Samsung's latest smartphones, which launched in China on Thursday, look a lot like Apple's iPhone 6 and 6S. The Galaxy C5 and more expensive C7 model specs include a fingerprint sensor, colors similar to Apple's popular gold and rose gold finishes, and most importantly, a metal shell with antenna bands that clearly mimics the design found on the iPhone 6 and 6S lineup.

As far as pricing goes, the Galaxy C5 is retailing at $366 for 64 GB storage — compared to $649 for Apple's iPhone 6 with equivalent storage — while the Galaxy C7 is running $427 for 64 GB, compared to $849 for the same storage in the iPhone 6S."

With Apple's next iPhone only debuting in September, Samsung wants to hammer the Chinese market with aggressive pricing to win back some of those iOS switchers that Apple laughingly boasts about at every Financial Conference Call of late.

In fact in April Tim Cook stated that "We continue to see a very high level of customer switching to iPhone from Android and other operating systems. In fact, we added more switchers from Android and other platforms in the first half of this year than any other six-month period ever." 

Samsung is copying Apple's industrial design and even color options. On one hand it's desperate. On the other, it's Samsung laughing at Apple Legal, as if to say: What are you going to do about it? Hmm, isn't this the company that Apple is partnering with for OLED displays next year?  I think Samsung Display should sit down and have a good talk with their parent company Samsung Electronics to tell them it's not polite to bite the hand that feeds them!

Here's to hoping that Apple will show some market muscle at this year's developer conference to get us all fired up for new devices and services this fall.

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