The launch of the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus allowed Samsung’s Unpacked app to skyrocket in popularity in the run-up to the February 25 announcement, with tens of thousands of people downloading it in order to stay updated on the latest flagships from the South Korean tech giant, data collected by analytics company Apptopia reveals. A day before the Sunday launch of the two handsets, Unpacked was ranked as the 228th most popular U.S. app in the Google Play Store’s Events category. On the day of the announcement, it surged to the 48th position and continued gaining massive traction even after the two Android phablets were announced. As of Tuesday, Unpacked was the sixth most popular Events app on the Google Play Store in the United States, according to Apptopia.
Despite its popularity surge, Unpacked was far from the most popular method of watching Samsung’s Galaxy S9 announcement. Immediately prior to the start of the Sunday event, the official YouTube stream of the unveil was being watched by half a million people, with another 100,000 joining in immediately after it started. The app itself remains a somewhat niche offering in Samsung’s portfolio and the debut of the Galaxy S9 series marks the first occasion on which Samsung managed to make it relevant on a global level. Despite using it to support the launches of its last several flagship offerings, the app only managed to surpass 10,000 global downloads in late January and surged to over 100,000 of them as the Galaxy S9-series devices were being unveiled on stage in Barcelona, Spain, according to Apptopia’s data.
The Google Play Store listing of the app reveals it’s been downloaded between 100,000 and half a million times to date. Apptopia’s estimates fall within the same range, suggesting Unpacked is now hovering around 120,000 worldwide downloads, with that figure having a 20-percent margin of error. Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus are officially becoming available for pre-orders today and will be released on a global level come March 16. Much like their predecessors, the handsets are expected to outsell all of their Android-powered rivals and end up in the hands of tens of millions of consumers across the globe.