Samsung Galaxy S24: A success story even before hitting the shelves

Samsung Electronics Co.'s latest flagship smartphone series, the Galaxy S24, is enjoying strong demand even before hitting the shelves of the company’s sales outlets, with record-breaking preorders.

The South Korean tech giant said on Friday it received preorders for a record 1.21 million units of the Galaxy S24, S24 Plus and Ultra models during the seven-day preorder period that began on Jan. 19 in Korea.

The number represents an 11% increase from 1.09 million preorders for its previous Galaxy S23 series released last year.

Samsung said it has sold 173,000 Galaxy S24 smartphones a day on average during the period, surpassing the previous record daily sales of 125,000 units for the Galaxy Note 10 in 2019.

Samsung, which fiercely competes with Apple Inc. for the world’s top spot in the premium mobile phone segment, unveiled the Galaxy S24 series last week at its Galaxy Unpacked 2024 event in San Jose, California.

Samsung pins high hopes on the new smartphone series as the launch comes days after it lost the crown as the world’s biggest smartphone maker to Apple and its iPhone.

The highest model, the S24 Ultra, comes with a titanium frame – Samsung’s first – to rival Apple’s iPhone 15 series.

The much-anticipated Galaxy S24 is replete with artificial intelligence enhancements, from Samsung and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, including built-in live translation of calls and a new search tool, Circle to Search, which lets users circle an image on the phone to get related information.

Samsung, also the world’s largest maker of memory chips and TVs, said the Galaxy S24 series is “the world’s first AI phone,” packed with a variety of on-device AI functions.

THREE MOBILE CARRIERS’ SALES PITCH

Samsung said the Galaxy S24 Ultra accounted for 60% of its total preorder volumes, while the basic model and the S24 Plus accounted for 19% and 21%, respectively.

Titanium Black was the favorite color for the Ultra model while Marble Gray was popular for other types of the Galaxy S24 series.

Korea’s three mobile carriers – SK Telecom Co., KT Corp. and LG Uplus Corp. – have also begun their sales pitch through preorder sales.

SK said customers in their 30s and 40s accounted for nearly half of its subscribers who ordered the latest Samsung smartphone in advance.

KT said its volume of the S24 Ultra with a 1 terabyte storage capacity, which it offered at the price of a 512-gigabyte model, sold out on the first day of preorders.

LG Uplus said its preorders for the latest Samsung smartphones were 25% more than the previous Galaxy models.

Samsung said the basic Galaxy S24 retails at 1,155,000 won ($863.6). Prices of the S24 Plus and the S24 Ultra models start at 1,353,000 won ($1,101.6) and 1,698,400 won ($1,269.8), respectively.

Under Korea’s mobile communication service support program, consumers can receive up to 276,000 won in subsidies per smartphone, including discounts offered by mobile carriers.

The Galaxy S24 series will be available at retail outlets on Jan. 31 in Korea and some select global markets, and later in other markets.

Write to Ye-Rin Choi at rambutan@hankyung.com

In-Soo Nam edited this article.