Samsung Galaxy S 4: Ovum's view

Samsung today announced the latest in its Galaxy S series of phones, the Galaxy S4.

Jan Dawson, chief telecom analyst at Ovum said "As anticipated, the device features a slightly larger screen, an improved camera, and beefed

up processor power and memory. The company also augmented various features previously available, including its eye-tracking capabilities."

"The Samsung Galaxy S4 highlights a couple of the key challenges Samsung faces. Firstly, having innovated rapidly over the last several years to vaunt itself into top spot in the world smartphone rankings, Samsung now faces essentially the same challenge as Apple: how to continue to

improve its devices year on year when existing phones are already top of their class, and there aren't obvious shortcomings? And secondly, how to set Samsung's devices apart from other devices that share the Android operating system that provides so much of the functionality? As rivals

such as HTC and Sony up the specs of their devices and provide ever better hardware, it becomes more and more important for Samsung to

differentiate on software and services," commented Dawson.

For now, Samsung can likely rely on its vastly superior marketing budget and the relatively weak efforts of its competitors in software to keep

it ahead added Dawson.