Samsung Level up: In-flight storage

Samsung Level up: Storage on the rise

Samsung has increased the flight altitude in the storage business via the channel with 15 percent revenue growth. At the Level up 2020 at Motorworld Cologne, the manufacturer honors deserving partners and talks about the current strategy.

Butzweilerhof was the first airport in the city of Cologne. The preserved buildings now belong to Motorworld Cologne and formed the framework for the level-up event of the storage division of Samsung. There, the manufacturer informed his partners from the channel about the current business with storage media and also honored particularly successful resellers and distributors (photos from the award ceremony in the picture gallery).

According to GfK, the manufacturer is not only the market leader in SSDs with a share of 46 percent, but also has the largest number of retail outlets in stationary and online retail with more than 10,000 resellers in Germany.

NVMe and portable SSDs are on the rise

According to Frank Kalisch, Director of storage at the manufacturer, the NVMe models now account for the largest share of SSDs sold, at 63 percent. A success story is the flagship 980 Pro, which is not only bought by many PC gamers, but also as a memory expansion for the Playstation 5. There are also bundle offers from the SSD with heatsink and the console. But even the business with SATA SSDs is still going better than expected. In addition to the upgrade business, the cheap QLC drives with high capacity, which replace the HDD as an additional data storage in many client computers, are also responsible for this. The temporary supply problems with SATA SSDs due to the lack of controller modules have now been solved, Kalisch emphasizes. Currently, all Samsung SSDs are well available.

Another growth topic is portable SSDs, which are increasingly establishing themselves as a robust and compact alternative to external hard drives. The new T7 Shield is off to a good start here. The SSD with rubberized housing in credit card format is protected against dust and water and is therefore not only interesting for private customers, but also for the media industry, for example when outdoor use with a photo or video camera. In addition, the IP65-certified SSD is also attracting attention among craftsmen, according to Wojtek Rudko, Head of Sales Storage at Samsung.

The weaker project business with system houses during the pandemic is on the upswing again, according to Kalisch, as many postponed projects are now being implemented. One goal is to achieve synergies with other product areas as part of the One Samsung strategy.

Opportunities in industry, healthcare and the automotive sector

Rudko also locates growing markets away from the classic IT business. “Industry, the medical sector and the automotive sector, for example, offer good growth opportunities – for example for SSDs in the future topic of autonomous driving. For automotive entertainment and security, on the other hand, the use of micro-SDs and UDFs can become a differentiating feature,” explains the sales manager.

According to Rudko, the focus is on close cooperation with the partners. “An important tool for this is our newly structured business portal. Here, partners receive personalized access to marketing materials, demo devices and interesting offers in order to be able to take advantage of new growth opportunities together with Samsung.” B2B partners can also submit project applications directly in the business portal via an online form, which simplifies and speeds up processing.

In marketing, gamers and tech users are at the center of a campaign for the premium NVMe SSDs, while the advantages of SSDs over HDDs are communicated to mainstream users, according to Susanne Hoffmann, Head of Product Marketing IN Storage at Samsung. Because among these users there is still a lot of potential for upgrading to SSDs, for which Samsung offers a service together with partners.

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