Samsung has shuttered its Samsung Mall app in India. The company has reportedly been sending notifications to the app's users in the country for over two months about the app's planned shut down on June 30. Right on time, Samsung Mall has stopped working for all. The app was first launched with the Samsung Galaxy On7 Prime smartphone back in January last year, but it doesn't seem to have gained much traction among Indian consumers.
Samsung Mall app now throws “Samsung Mall is now closed” message when opened. The company has also removed the app from Google Play Store and accessing the app link gives a 404 error – “we're sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server.” TizenHelp.com was first to report about the demise of the app and the blog had previously also reported about the notifications that Samsung Mall users were getting.
As we mentioned earlier, Samsung Mall was launched alongside the Galaxy On7 Prime smartphone in early 2018. The app originally included a visual search function, which allowed users to search for different items by taking a photo or by choosing an image from their existing photos. The app would then offer results from various e-commerce websites, including Amazon, Tata Cliq, Shopclues, and the company's own e-store. Samsung later added features like compare prices, price drop alerts, and more. As the app was only an aggregator, the consumers were redirected to the official stores to complete their purchase.
With the introduction of a number of price comparisons websites and apps as well as the growing popularity of official apps of the various e-retailers in the country, it seems the consumers were not finding much use for Samsung Mall.
As per a cached Google Play listing, the app had managed to garner over 10 million installs in over two years of its existence, most of which would most likely be the Samsung devices, which got the app pre-installed. Anecdotal evidence suggests the Galaxy M20 was the company's last phone to get Samsung Mall pre-installed, indicating that the company has been thinking about ending support for Samsung Mall for some time.
We have reached out to Samsung to get more clarity about Samsung Mall's shut down and why the company has decided to do so. We will update the report when we hear back from the company.
For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.