Samsung Unpacked event had double the viewership of the Oscars

Samsung Unpacked Show (Image credit: Samsung)

Are technology and smart devices a bigger draw than sports and movies, two of the traditional crowd pullers on live telecasts? Well, you will answer in the affirmative if you go by the numbers that Samsung's headline-grabbing Unpacked event managed to put up on the board.

According to Samsung, the first online Galaxy Unpacked event, which was streamed from Korea on various online channels, had a whopping 56 million viewers in accumulated aggregate. The last year's event had a viewership of around 44 million.

Fun fact: This year's Oscar ceremony had a total viewership of 23.6 million.

That is, the Samsung extravganza had more than double the veiwership of Hollywood's biggest showpiece event.

On YouTube, the number of concurrent viewers of the Samsung show hit 450,000 during the 100-minute show.

Such events can be the new normal 

The numbers are indeed staggering. But beyond the numbers, the successful staging of the event also seems to have shown the way for other tech companies to follow suit in the post-Covid world.

If it were a regular event, only a few hundreds, all from the tech industry, would have got a peep into the show. Now this spectacular online event has shown that there are effective and better ways of launching products with global audience watching avidly.

The livestream allowed viewers to focus on the glitzy computer graphics of the new products, and the details of the gadgets were evocatively accessible to the general public. 

While the delivery of new product information is at its core, Unpacked is much more than just a straightforward product introduction—it’s an impactful brand showcase.

Samsung said it remains positive about holding similar online events down the road. “There is a high possibility of utilizing what we have used for the unpacking event for other occasions in the near future,” a Samsung official has been quoted as saying in the Korean media.

For the record, five devices were revealed during the even: Galaxy Note20 and Galaxy Note20 Ultra, Tab S7 and S7+, Galaxy Watch3, Galaxy Buds Live, and Galaxy Z Fold2.

Source: The Korea Herald.

Balakumar K
Senior Editor

Over three decades as a journalist covering current affairs, politics, sports and now technology. Former Editor of News Today, writer of humour columns across publications and a hardcore cricket and cinema enthusiast. He writes about technology trends and suggest movies and shows to watch on OTT platforms.