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You could drop Samsung's Galaxy S7 in the pool (but you probably shouldn't)

Samsung and LG are fighting for share in an increasingly saturated smartphone market.

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Omar Sobhani/Reuters
An Afghan worker installs a HUAWEI Smartphone advertisement poster on a building in Kabul, Afghanistan, Feb. 15. The field for smartphones could become both more crowded and more saturated.

An Olympic archer trains with help from a smartphone in the pouring rain. A llama named Kuzco spends 30 minutes with a soon-to-be-released phone, then "paints the device" from memory. 

The exotic array of announcements, leaks, and mammal appearances are drumming up excitement for the Mobile World Congress on Feb. 21. Android phones are playing the market particularly hard this year, reported Matt Hamblen for Computerworld.

Android devices – whether from Samsung, LG, or another company – are fighting over the lucrative smartphone market in a slowing global economy.

Hence the llama. 

No Android producer is yet an undisputed second to Apple's iPhone. The looming question is whether global markets can continue to support the kind of explosive growth that has so far characterized smartphone sales.

Last month, the question went right to the top, as rumors of the iPhone's demise, though ultimately exaggerated, precipitated a fall in Apple's shares in early 2016.

Apple's sales will continue to be strong, says Apple CEO Tim Cook.

"We believe that iPhone will grow in Q1, and we base that on what we're seeing from a switcher point of view," Mr. Cook said, according to Apple Insider. "We recorded the highest rate on record for Android switchers last quarter at 30 percent."

The crowded Android market is fighting over an ever-smaller part of the pie, he said. "If you look at China ... over 50 percent of people that bought a 6 and a 6 Plus were buying their first iPhone," Cook said, reported Apple Insider. 

Thus far, Samsung has not yet taken the bite from Apple's iPhone share that some predicted it would, and demand for its smartphones could be declining overall, Jungah Lee reported for Bloomberg. 

"S6 didn’t sell as well as the market had hoped for, partly because of continued outperforming of iPhones combined with the supply constraint,” analyst Greg Roh told Bloomberg. “Sales sharply missed the market expectation, which implies that overall technology industry demand for smartphones, TVs, and PCs is weakening."

Android devices are fighting this tide with a variety of creative, sometimes self-defeating, releases. Samsung Sweden's llama tease delicately hides the new smartphone behind a South American mammal, while Samsung Indonesia shows the Galaxy S7 in a rainstorm.

Underneath the waterworks, Samsung posted a disclaimer:

The scene in the video is for dramatization purposes only. This product is not water resistant and it should not be exposed to and/or submerged into water/liquid. 

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