Channeling Sales

Well, it’s official. Origami is arriving on our shores and it’s a whopper.  With a price tag or $1099 no one is going to confuse Samsung’s Q1 with anything but an expensive, elitist toy, at least for consumers. And it is equally interesting, at least to me, and equally mystifying as well why Samsung would choose Best Buy online and then a select number of stores for the consumer portion of the launch (CDW makes a lot more sense if businesses are going to buy it, but since none of them are going to buy this iteration, the business channel Samsung chooses is less relevant).

While Samsung’s channel proclivities are well known, as in “we will never sell direct,” BB seems a strange choice for an overpriced gadget geek toy. Best Buy has been striving to be a first mover in technology for quite awhile and it is always a bit of a stretch for them, but this seems like a nonstarter for all concerned. Especially since I can’t imagine any kind of mass volumes to support BB’s business needs nor can we see geeks happy to visit one of those places pretty high up on their list of evil empires. However, it probably was a great channel relations move for Samsung, but it is likely to mean a slower more painful birth for the Origami.