Rumours that Samsung is planning to respond to the iPhone 5 by pushing up the launch of its own Galaxy S IV to Mobile World Congress in Feb 2013 have provoked plenty of discussion over the past day or so.
Naturally, then, Samsung has now come out and dismissed the rumours as completely untrue – in fact it won't even go as far as to say it plans to unveil an SGS4 in the first place.
The early launch rumours first surfaced courtesy of the Korea Times over the weekend: “Samsung is ready to unveil the next Galaxy smartphone, the Galaxy S4, at early next year’s mobile world congress (MWC) in the Spanish city of Barcelona.”
The logic was that the first two Galaxy S handsets were announced at MWC so it would actually be a return to form. The key, though, is “announced”, as the reason this year's Galaxy S III launch occurred later in the year was to bring it closer to the handset's actual release.
So unless advocates of the MWC 2013 theory were suggesting Sammy planned to return to a three month delay between launch date and on-sale date, they were really saying that the Galaxy S III faced being replaced after only 10 months or so.
Not surprisingly, plenty of people disagreed with that idea, and Samsung itself is clearly among them. The SamsungTomorrow Twitter account had this to say (loosely translated from Korean):
“Please note that the speculation reported by some media regarding the Galaxy S III's successor is purely rumour, and simply not true. We have not announced anything, so why spread these rumours?”
Note the unwillingness to even go as far as committing to the name Galaxy S IV – though that's typical Samsung, rather than a hint that it's thinking of changing the naming convention.
Still, we imagine it won't stop the chatter – after all, now that Eldar Murtazin is involved it's open season.
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