Samsung Africa Forum 2017: Overview and Presentations

With 24th February being the date of the 8th annual Samsung Africa Forum 2017 themed “One Pride“, we saw the new products Samsung has developed for the African market. The one day event was all about product leads at Samsung sharing the plans for the continent, which are to provide innovations to every kind of consumer, regardless of their financial status.

The day opened with famous South African host and Samsung brand ambassador Joanne Strauss who welcomed all the media in attendance and moderated the speakers.

First up was Samsung Africa President JJ Kim, who promised that in everything Samsung will ever build they will listen to consumer’s needs and media’s feedback on it. “We are working with media partners to make Samsung a big brand in Africa. We will listen to what you have to say,” he ended.

Next was Hlubi Shivanda, Samsung ‎Director of Operations – South Africa, and he started off by saying, “When the media gets excited about something Samsung has made they share it with the world. Our survival depends on our unity with the media. Samsung has not always been as successful as we’d have liked but we are willing to learn as we interact with more media partners.”

After Shivanda was Samsung’s Regional product Manager – Visual Deisplay and Audio, Chaun-Paul Reddiar who introduced the 4 aspects Samsung wants to work on this year:

• a unified experience,
• personalized discovery,
• more 4K and HDR content,
• and connected TV

He also introduced their new range of QLED TV range, which Samsung is using the latest quantum dot technology in.  Reddiar explained this allows for better picture quality at any angle of a room and picks out a few features of the new QLED TVs in this video:

QLED TVs are the next step in TV tech and Samsung will start shipping in the second quarter of 2017.

Sunil Gupta, Samsung’s Regional Manager for Digital Appliances opened his presentation on Samsung’s new air conditioner by stating that Africa with its hot climates needs proper air conditioning, thus they have created the wind-free uses less energy and is WiFi enabled and cools down twice as fast as ordinary units.

He also introduced the new RT7000 and RT6000 fridges designed to improve the way we store food, keeping it fresher longer, as the freezer and fridge sections are kept independently of each other, running on 2 different airflows.

Lastly we heard from South African businesswoman, CEO, media mogul, former Miss South Africa (1994) and serial entrepreneur Basetsana Kumalo who shared how important technology is to the production of digital technology.

She said:

“We need to create technology smartly that it empowers young people. Way back content timing was dictated by broadcasters, but now consumers are turning to vidoe on demand (VoD) when they want it, and are consuming content on multiple screens, mobile or TV, at the same time. Consumers are interacting with digital content and will then log onto social media to talk about it leading to a trending topic or hashtag.”

The 1st part of the forum was done, and you can now see the full product highlights and images from the Samsung Africa Forum 2017 exhibition that followed in the next article.