Samsung has turned a new coin, in a sense, to look for a new design for their upcoming smartphone collection. They'll be doing this by bringing in a man who happened to be former CEO of Tangerine, the London-based design company that at one time employed Apple’s design leader Jony Ive. Lee Don-tae, is now reporting to Samsung Electronics President Toon Boo-keun and will be engaging with the company’s Design Management Center.
Don-tae has collaborated in the past with companies like LG, Toyota, and British Airways. As Samsung nabs the new designer their hope will likely be to turn things around with a renewed focus on design. Lee would be leading the hardware design team for Samsung mobile products, says a Samsung official who told Korea JoongAng Daily. After release of the Galaxy S5, Samsung had received some not so warming reviews, forcing the company to make changes within the design staff, seen last May.
Samsung is in the weeds as Apple (inside the US) and Xiaomi (in China) are dominating the competition slowly pushing the Korean company out - seeing profits drop 37% for the holiday quarter 2014. This year, Samsung is reported seeing the slack and fixing the problem by taking on a new approach to mobile design. Samsung has recently been rumored to be working with new metal chassis, cutting out TouchWiz, and working with new screen technology (think Galaxy Note Edge) to bring themselves back to the front of the pack.
With rumors that suggest Samsung products will be cutting out unnecessary software add-ons and Don-tae taking over the design team, we can only hope that the next Galaxy S smartphone will have a fresh new look and feel to it.