Just two months after the official release of the Galaxy S3, the new flagship handset from Samsung has sold 10 million units worldwide.
Samsung's head of mobile communications, Shin Jong-kyun, was quoted as saying in June that the company was expecting the S3 to top the 10 million mark in July. Jong-kyun has now confirmed the S3 has already surpassed this target, but has declined to divulge the exact figures.
The flagship smartphone was released in SA early in June and, at the time, Samsung's then country manager, Deon Liebenberg (who now heads up Telkom Business Mobile), said the S3 was on track to become the “fastest selling gadget in history” and had already broken records with over nine million pre-orders. Locally, Samsung SA received close to 50 000 pre-orders for the S3.
By comparison, the iPhone 4S sold four million units, including pre-orders, during its first weekend of sales in 2011. The S2, which went on sale at the end of April last year, received three million pre-orders globally and took five months to reach the 10 million mark in sales figures (although it also had a significantly slower global rollout than the S3).
According to a Reuters poll of 41 industry analysts last week, the S3 has helped Samsung increase its lead over Apple and Nokia in the smartphone space in the second quarter of this year.
During the second quarter, Samsung is expected to have sold 50 million smartphones in total, compared to an estimated 30.5 million iPhones sold for Apple. It is noted that Samsung benefits from the broad range of smartphones it currently sells, while Apple's sales are dependent on the launch schedule of the iPhone.
"Samsung is expected to be the smartphone hero in the second quarter," said IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo. "We are also expecting to see the biggest smartphone volumes ever shipped from one single vendor in one quarter, driven by strong demand of the Galaxy portfolio, particularly the Galaxy S2 and S3.”
Share