Despite selling a grand total of close to 230 million smartphones around the world, Samsung cannot be very pleased with its 2023 results in a market dominated by Apple for the first time in history (at least for an entire year). And while there are obviously many different reasons why the former global champion lost its crown and saw its annual shipment figures decline by 13.6 percent compared to 2022, one handset family with a lot of fingers pointed at it is clearly the Galaxy S23.
Although undoubtedly successful by all other Android phone makers’ standards, the S23 series failed to earn more than a mediocre eight spot among the world’s top-selling smartphone models in Q2 2023, for instance. That’s a very poor result for the super-premium Galaxy S lineup, which proved less popular than not just the iPhone 14 roster and the “vanilla” iPhone 13 last year but low to mid-end devices like the Galaxy A14 and A54 as well.
It pretty much goes without saying that Samsung is hoping the Galaxy S24S24 Plus, and S24 Ultra will sell better than their predecessors, and although it’s (extremely) early days, some very encouraging signs are coming from two key markets.
1.21 million pre-orders in seven days… in one country
There are no prizes for guessing what country we’re talking about here, as Samsung’s new flagships always get off to flying starts in South Korea. Of course, some starts are more flying than others, and the 1.21 million Galaxy S24 series units pre-ordered in Samsung’s homeland between January 19 and 25 mark a solid improvement over the 1.09 million units pulled by last year’s S23, S23 Plus, and S23 Ultra during a similar one-week pre-order window in the same country.
Because that was itself a regional record, Samsung has a new all-time top performer on its hands, at least as far as the Galaxy S family is concerned. While the S24 trio is proving more successful (for now) than any of its forerunners, the Galaxy Note 10 duo continues to hold its manufacturer’s overall local pre-order record with a whopping 1.38 million units collected back in August 2019… in 11 days.
That last part means the comparison between the two is not entirely fair, and if we look at the daily pre-order average, the Galaxy S24 series holds a clear advantage and thus can be considered the most popular handset family in history on Samsung’s home turf… as far as early sales are concerned.
Naturally, Samsung is likely to care a lot more about the long-term popularity of the S24, S24 Plus, and S24 Ultra, which is virtually impossible to predict with any degree of confidence or accuracy, and perhaps most importantly, the three’s sales figures outside of the always friendly South Korean market. And speaking of…
The Galaxy S24 series is also huge in India
But the ultra-high-end S24 trio is proving incredibly successful around those parts as well, at least in the first few days of pre-orders. Specifically, it apparently took these AI-powered bad boys just three days to hit 250,000 pre-orders in India, which may not sound as impressive as the aforementioned one-week Korean tally, but it’s reportedly higher than what the Galaxy S23 series achieved last year in three whole weeks.
That’s simply mind-blowing, and it’s also unsurprisingly a local record for Samsung that… may not mean much in the long run but certainly gives the tech giant realistic hopes of returning to the number one spot in the global smartphone vendor chart at the end of 2024, as well as vastly improving its overall profit margins and net mobile division gains.
