Samsung Galaxy S5
Samsung Galaxy S5 REUTERS/Albert Gea

The Galaxy S5 release date is set for April 11 but the waiting time for the smartphone's actual market availability could be a bit longer as new reports suggest that Samsung is struggling with fingerprint scanner manufacturing issues.

Phone Arena has reported this week that Samsung's ongoing fingerprint manufacturing efforts for the GS5 is fraught with yield problems, likely serious enough to cause a tentative pushback of the Galaxy S5 official market entry.

And with the pressing concern hovering, it is a possibility too that Samsung will not be able to ship out enough GS5 supplies some six weeks or so from now. That would mean, alarming delays and stock outs could characterise the Galaxy S5's market debut in the mid-part of April 2014.

The same report, however, also clarified that the Galaxy device maker is not pressing the panic button, not yet anyway. As preventive measure, the company has already tapped a contractor to fill in the voids that resulted to Samsung's in-house component production issues.

"Samsung has turned to a third party producer and is said to be in negotiations with a company called Crucialtec to provide the fingerprint scanners for the Galaxy S5," Phone Arena said on its report.

The tech site points to South Korean publication Daum as source of its information.

Daum has indicated that Crucialtec has a fine reputation in producing optical tracks pads and fingerprint scanner for mobile device. The same firm was reportedly in talks with Samsung for the then-rumoured Touch ID-like feature of the Galaxy Note 3 in late 2013.

It appears now that Crucialtec will play a big role on Samsung's plan to deploy an enhanced version of fingerprint scanner with the Galaxy Note 4, which is touted to come out in the second half of 2014.

As for the Galaxy S5, Samsung is now pressured to deliver everything that it promises to pack with the Galaxy S4 replacement. The idea of falling short of expectations, especially in the fingerprint scanner, will not look good for Samsung.

According to Phone Arena, issues like these are viewed in South Korea as a major dent on Samsung's image. The sentiment is somehow connected on efforts by the Asian tech giant to overtake Apple as soon as it can - both in shipment and revenue races.

But with production glitch and the subsequent supply shortage that surely will follow clouding the Galaxy S5 just weeks prior to its release date, Samsung could be staring at a major setback in its escalating tiff against the iPhone 6 maker.

Bannered by the fingerprint scanner as among its loads of killer features, the Galaxy S5 is highly touted to draw huge sales numbers in record time, likely replicating the 10 million sales that the Galaxy S4 has chalked up in 30 days.

On its release date, granted there will be no delays and supplies are sufficient, analysts predict that the Galaxy S5 will swiftly fly off the shelves as Sammy fans scramble to get a hold of a faster, slightly-bigger and heftier, mightier, longer-lasting and probably cheaper successor to the Galaxy S4.