At MWC 2018, Samsung launched the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus with an evolutionary design building on Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. Samsung is focusing on enhanced camera capabilities to differentiate from the competition and stay in the race with Apple's camera advancements, IHS Markit believes.

In its analysis, IHS indicated unless Samsung changes its portfolio strategy, Samsung's smartphone shipments will decline by 2.6% in 2018 compared with overall market growth of 3.9%. With the S9 and S9 Plus' iterative designs, Samsung is banking on its successful design language from 2017 to continue to match buyer preferences, while Samsung adds enough new features to justify upgrades.

Samsung is packing its main innovative push into the cameras of its latest flagship Galaxy S devices, IHS noted. All major handset brands bar Sony, Google and HTC have deployed dual camera set ups broadly. These are the first Galaxy S models to feature a dual main camera design. Dual camera on its own is no longer a smartphone differentiator. Instead, Samsung knows it must create other imaging experiences to stand out from rivals.

On both handsets, Samsung offers a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera with an innovative switchable aperture: F2.4 for daylight pictures and F1.4 for low light images. No other current smartphone OEM offers more than one aperture size on a camera module, although Nokia did implement variable aperture way back in 2009 with the Nokia N86, IHS indicated. Like Apple, Samsung is reserving its dual-camera set up for the larger Plus model. But the dual aperture capability makes the smaller S9 in particular stand out compared with the fixed aperture single camera design of the regular size iPhone 8, IHS said.

With the new super slow motion video capture, Samsung has improved on previous industry attempts to commercialize this feature (notably Sony Xperia XZ Premium), with an option to automatically trigger the brief period of high speed capture. Similarly, Bixby Vision improvements which add real time translation and food recognition into the camera app add convenience because they are built in and integrated, but have been done before in third party apps and competitor smartphones.

Other features, like "AR emoji," in other words animated emojis, are visible user experience enhancements which Samsung will use to counter other handset makers and help a consumer to make a decision to upgrade. Without Apple iPhone X's rich depth sensing front sensor array, Samsung's animated emoji may not be as accurate, but the implementation will be good enough for such a fun feature, IHS said.

The S9's hardware design is unlikely to appeal to users who have purchased a recent Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus device in the last year, but for those with older handsets who are the real target market, this is not a problem. The larger displays, faster network performance and significant camera improvements make for an attractive smartphone for existing Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S6 owners, IHS said.

The decision to have dual camera capability on the Plus model does speak to a larger industry trend to offer premium features at premium pricing, IHS indicated. The fact that the Galaxy S9+ price has pushed past the US$900 mark signals top name OEMs' ambition to capture more value at an increasing maturing smartphone market.

In addition, IHS continued that Samsung needs the Galaxy S9 series to set the pace for 2018, after the company saw shipments decline by 2.2% to 74.3 million units in the fourth quarter of 2017 from 76 million units a year ago. While Apple also saw slight decline in shipment numbers, the company was able to raise its average selling price, by shipping more of its super premium devices, like iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X.

Samsung hopes the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus to ship in greater numbers than last year's models. In the first full quarter of availability (second-quarter 2017), Galaxy S8 shipped 9.3 million units and 9.4 million units for Galaxy S8 Plus, but shipments declined to 5.4 million and 3.7 million units in next quarter, according to IHS. Extending the high volume shipment period beyond one quarter will help Samsung offset its declining unit shipments in the next year and maintain profitability.

Samsung will benefit from the timing of the competition's market launches in 2018. For example, neither Huawei nor LG will release their next flagship devices in the first quarter. In years' past many of the early flagship devices of the year launched simultaneously at Mobile World Congress, pitting them against each other once they reached consumers. This year, Samsung will have a multi-week lead against the main Android competition, IHS said.