Report: Samsung's budget smartphones to get fingerprint readers and Samsung Pay (NFC)

Samsung has made a major name for itself with its flagship Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series. This year the company even threw a couple of curve balls into the mix. Even though Q3 2015 held some good news, it was largely a result of its components business and a favorable exchange rate. Smartphones are now a commodity and thus the pricing wars have already started to have an effect on the profit picture for many companies, save for perhaps one.

According to The Korea Herald – citing an industry source – “Samsung is planning to deploy fingerprint sensors in budget smartphone models.” This would be a marked change from the current product line-up which has essentially relegated their use to only high end phones, and the Galaxy A8 mid-range offering.

The unnamed source mentioned the trick will be finding a way to deal with the costs associated with the component in comparison to the selling price of a budget device.

It was also pointed out in the aforementioned news report that:

“Samsung tops 14 out of 15 emerging smartphone markets including Indonesia, Turkey, and Egypt, according to market researcher Strategic Analytics…The company’s market shares in Turkey, Romania, the Netherlands and Portugal stood at more than 40 percent. In Egypt, Samsung scooped up a 53 percent market share…Market analysts attributed Samsung’s robust performance in the markets to the budget Galaxy smartphone lineups.”

In addition to bio-metric reading, the first half of 2016 is expected to see the budget brands getting Samsung Pay:

“Hwang Min-sung, an analyst from Samsung Securities, forecast that Samsung would surely install the payment system, which is compatible with both traditional magnetic stripes and Near Field Communication terminals, on its budget models running on Google’s Android operating system.”

Samsung may also bring its NFC payment platform to Tizen devices, though Min-sung felt that “Tizen smartphones with the mobile payment function would have little impact on the market.”

At the very least, this news serves to offer a possible glimpse into what next year’s Galaxy J or Galaxy E lines might consist of. Alternatively, the company could release an all-together new line of budget products that focuses on NFC and bio-metrics, thus allowing them to possibly exist along side the (possibly) cheaper “bare bones” alternatives.

Still, some of the main creature comforts that people ask for in their smartphones, namely a notification LED and an auto-brightness adjustment setting tend to be absent from Samsung’s more price-conscious models. Will they finally make an appearance as well? Only time can tell.