The pre-order performance of Samsung’s Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus in South Korea is similar to that of the Galaxy S8 lineup, Yonhap News reported earlier this week, citing industry sources with knowledge of the matter. The 2017 flagship lineup amassed approximately 550,000 pre-orders in the Far Eastern country in 48 hours last year, whereas the new series is understood to be performing about the same or slightly below that figure, insiders suggest. The Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus broke all of Samsung’s advanced order records and aren’t expected to be outperformed by their successors. Samsung still hasn’t released any commercial performance figures for the Galaxy S9 lineup, signaling its new models aren’t in as high of a demand as the 2017 devices were.
Some industry watchers were previously speculating the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco boosted the success of the Galaxy S8 lineup as it left many Samsung fans without a new flagship device in late 2016, pushing them to wait for the company’s next high-end offering and get it more quickly than they normally would. No such ordeal happened last year and between the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8, many of the firm’s loyal customers have already upgraded their mobile devices within the last 12 months. Consumers in general are becoming more conservative around the world, with global smartphone shipments and sales declining for the first time ever in the fourth quarter of 2017, according to most major industry trackers. With people now being less inclined to upgrade their smartphones on a biannual basis, Samsung is even considering refurbishing the Galaxy S8 lineup as a mid-range series, as recently suggested by its mobile chief DJ Koh.
Samsung said it’s expecting the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus to outsell their predecessors which are estimated to have sold 37 million units over their first eleven months of commercial availability, as per several studies. Even if the newly announced Android flagships fail to achieve that goal, they’re still widely expected to be the most commercially successful non-iPhone devices of the year. The Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus are presently available for pre-orders and will be released globally on March 16.