Samsung could drop the Galaxy branding to help users navigate their range

A new report says that Samsung may be about to do something really big: drop the Galaxy branding.

The report, by Korean tech site eToday, says that Samsung is considering a major shake-up of its branding – and that shake-up may mean the end of the Galaxy prefix in future devices. That means the Samsung Galaxy S25 may just be the Samsung S25; the next Samsung Galaxy Watch would be the Samsung Watch; and so on.

As Sammobile reports, the proposal is the exact opposite from Samsung's 2015 Japanese rebranding: until that year Samsung simply sold its phones as Samsung phones, but it brought in the Galaxy branding with the Samsung Galaxy S6. But the Galaxy brand was dropped again last year in what may be a preview of Samsung's global future.

The story is only a rumour so far, and nothing may come of it. But there are good reasons why Samsung may be putting the Galaxy branding far, far away from future devices.

Why is Samsung considering dropping the Galaxy?

There's an argument that Samsung has been a little bit too enthusiastic about its Galaxy branding. With Apple, there's a clear difference between an iPhone, an iPad and an Apple Watch not just in terms of the hardware but the naming. But with Samsung, Galaxy could be a phone, a watch, a tablet or a foldable.

Part of the problem is that Samsung uses the Galaxy brand for multiple price brackets with very similar model naming – so there's the Samsung Galaxy S24, its premium range, and the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE, the budget option. The Galaxy S9 was a phone, but now the Tab S9 is a tablet. And so on.

That's apparently a big branding problem: Sammobile reports that young people in particular don't see Galaxy as a premium brand and are gravitating to the iPhone instead. In Samsung's home of South Korea, one survey found that 64% of 20-somethings had iPhones; among young women that figure rocketed to 75%. By dropping the Galaxy branding, that gives Samsung the opportunity to create another way to make its more premium devices stand out.