I would have loved to have been in the audience at Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall for Samsung’s live launch of their new flagship phone.
Not so much to have been there to capture a moment of history in the making but just to see the reaction on the faces of the people around me.
Instead I watched it from home, via the YouTube live stream, and spent much of this time in open-mouthed disbelief.
Samsung decided on a rather unconventional product launch in the form of a one-off Broadway musical featuring an annoying tap-dancing child and a group of people endlessly going on vacation around the world.
I think there was a comedy theme running through the entire event but there were absolutely no laughs coming from the audience…just lots and lots of awkward silence.
When I spoke to a few friends immediately after the event and asked them what the main thing they remembered, most said it was the tap dancing boy.
Each scene was supposed to highlight one particular feature of the phone, but the phone stuff was mainly lost in the production to me, and many others judging from the initial reaction on Twitter.
The BBC’s technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones was clearly unimpressed with what was unfolding on the Broadway stage.
He tweeted:
- So far, this is ever so slightly cringeworthy
#SamsungUnpacked - The S4 looks like a great phone but this presentation is making me want to hide under the table and whimper
- Interesting – the one word missing in that cringe-inducing Samsung Broadway show was Android.
The whole event reminded me of The Apprentice when one of the teams does some spectacularly awful presentation and they sit back in the boardroom thinking it was great…until finally it hits them that it really was terrible and, next thing, somebody gets fired.
Here is some more Twitter reaction on the musical launch:
TechRadar: “If you need commentary to make this awful Samsung press conference bearable, allow me to recommend…”
Twitter user @Rhettimus was clearly unimpressed, if perhaps a little harsh, with this Tweet: “Whoever came with up with the Galaxy 4 Launch Event Platform needs to be shot. Immediately. Made them looks seriously foolish.”
The Mac Observer described the launch event as “awkward.” Yes awkward is a good word and sums up the event well.
It seems that the markets have also reacted badly to the musical launch.
Reuters reported: “Samsung stock falls after new S4 launch.
“Shares of Samsung Electronics Co Ltd fell as much as 1.32 percent in early trade in Seoul following the launch of its new Galaxy S4 smartphone on Friday.”