After months of expectation from users around the world, Samsung finally unveiled their latest flagship phones for the first half of 2016, the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge. In the past few years, the company has been struggling to keep its dominance position in the market, and the S7 performance will be a thermometer of how Samsung is turning their [bad] luck around. The handsets hit markets around the world last Friday, March 11th, and we just got the figures for sales in Samsung’s home country, South Korea.
According to a report from local website Yonhap News, more than 100,000 units of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge were sold in the first two days, that is, Friday and Saturday. The flat Galaxy S7 seems to be more popular than the curved-screen Galaxy S7 edge, and the former had 60% more sales than the latter – that is, 60,000 units for the S7 and over 40,000 for the S7 edge. Since the S7 is smaller and over $100 cheaper than the Galaxy S7 edge, that might be one good reason for better sales. Nonetheless, this is a good number when you consider it is coming from just one country. We are yet to see how many units were sold worldwide, especially in the U.S., where the company has a strong presence but faces heavy competition from Apple, Samsung’s main rival. Talking about Apple, the iPhone maker sold around 13 million units during the iPhone 6S opening weekend, last September, and it will be interesting to see how Samsung’s numbers compare to that.
Last year’s Galaxy S6 offered a huge improvement from 2014’s Galaxy S5, which had really disappointing sales, but still failed to represent a significant increase in sales for Samsung. That said, the Galaxy S7 represents the company’s hopes for sales growth, and Samsung put a lot of effort to make the phone attractive to consumers. Despite powerful hardware, the handsets are water resistant, the design has been improved over last year’s model, the camera has been tweaked for low light performance, the microSD card is back, the batteries are larger and they charge faster with Quick Charge technology. Additionally, Samsung has been spending a lot of money in marketing, and users are getting some good deals for the first days of sales, including buy-one-get-one with T-Mobile, plus other discounts and promotions with the Gear VR virtual reality device.