Samsung Galaxy S9 might just launch in January

Although the Samsung Galaxy S8 wasn’t announced until late March of this year, it’s possible that the Samsung Galaxy S9 could arrive two months ahead of the expected schedule, in late January of 2018.

That theory is based on the fact that Samsung Display’s OLED screen shipments will apparently begin in November according to South Korean media, which itself is two months earlier than they started for the Galaxy S8.

So based on this schedule it’s possible that Samsung will announce the Galaxy S9 towards the end of January, with the phone hitting stores around mid-February.

Why would Samsung do that? One theory is that it’s to defend against the threat of the iPhone 8, which is set to launch on September 12.

Our money's on March

But we’re not convinced by that, or that an early Galaxy S9 launch will happen at all. Even if it did launch early Apple would still have a good four-month head start, and Samsung’s already just launched the Galaxy Note 8, which itself should be a strong iPhone 8 competitor, especially given that Apple’s new phone is also rumored to be a phablet.

Perhaps more significantly, most buyers are likely on a two-year upgrade cycle, since that’s the typical length of phone contracts, which means that anyone who bought the Samsung Galaxy S7 or Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge would be key customers for Samsung, but they won’t be eligible to upgrade that early in the year.

We wouldn’t completely rule out an early launch, and this isn’t the first time that we’ve heard that production of the phone has begun earlier than usual, but for now we’d say not to expect the Samsung Galaxy S9 before at least March.