Samsung’s premium Galaxy Watch strategy appears to be all over the place, but I think this might be one of those rare cases when every move might be intentional and calculated. The fact that the company’s high-end smartwatches seem to follow an unpredictable pattern could be deliberate and well-planned.
Over the past few years, Samsung introduced three distinguished premium smartwatch models. We had the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic and the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, then the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic. And last year, Samsung gave the world the first Ultra-branded Galaxy Watch.
For 2025, Samsung is seemingly planning the return of the Classic lineup through the upcoming Galaxy Watch 8 Classic. At a glance, it almost seems like Samsung doesn’t know what to do with its premium Galaxy Watch business. So, is it all just random? Maybe not.
Mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches seem to have reached a point where they don’t change drastically year-on-year. Each new generation brings better performance, better AI, and a more polished software experience.
It works just fine for smartphones and tablets. However, smartwatches are different and in a league of their own. Galaxy Watches, unlike phones and tablets, double as fashion items. It is an inevitable truth.
So, how can Samsung avoid new smartwatch releases looking too stale? The technology doesn’t evolve rapidly enough to get Galaxy Watch fans excited every year. The answer might lie in what Samsung is already doing right: keeping two or three premium lineups in rotation and giving each premium model more than a year to evolve and distinguish itself from its direct predecessor.
Samsung may have found the perfect loophole to hide the slow evolution of wearable tech
If we look at the base Galaxy Watch models, they haven’t evolved much, visually speaking, from one generation to the next for the past four years. The Galaxy Watch 4 (2021) and Watch 5 (2022) look pretty much the same, and the Galaxy Watch 6 (2023) and Watch 7 (2024) do, too.
In fact, every base Galaxy Watch model Samsung released since 2021 looks the same, with the exception of different colors and bands and the fact that the Watch 6 and 7 have slightly bigger screens and thinner bezels.
Conversely, if we look at Samsung’s premium smartwatch lineup, it’s a lot more dynamic, diverse, and exciting. And that is because Samsung avoided the same pattern of releasing a direct sequel year-on-year.
This seemingly random launch strategy gave Samsung more than one year to evolve its premium smartwatches. It allowed the company to overcome the slow evolution of smartwatch technology and keep things fresh. It’s a loophole!
With a two-year gap between the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic and its sequel, Samsung had the chance to make the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic exciting. A similar two-year gap will act as a buffer between the Watch 6 Classic and the upcoming Watch 8 Classic.
It’s always hard to predict what Samsung is thinking when the company does things seemingly at random. But I think this two-to-three-year rotation launch strategy might be deliberate.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Samsung brings back the Galaxy Watch Pro or the Watch Ultra in 2027 and allows the Classic series to breathe and evolve more naturally once again. Likewise, this would give the Pro or the Ultra extra time to take more meaningful evolutionary steps from one generation to the next.
Maybe I’m reading too much into the randomness of Samsung’s Galaxy Watch strategy. But I’m beginning to think that the company may have found a loophole to avoid the staleness of slow-moving technology in the smartwatch market segment — a segment that relies very much on the fashion aspect. It might be the stuff of genius.
