The flagship Galaxy S series is home to the most popular Android smartphones worldwide, but Samsung hasn't been boastful about the exact number of Galaxy S9 units sold compared to previous generations even after over a full month of availability. Singaporean analytical firm Canalys decided to take matters into its own hands to find out how well the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus have been doing in markets around the world.
According to Canalys, Samsung managed to ship just over 8 million Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus smartphones in their first four weeks of availability worldwide to be comparable to the first four weeks of the Galaxy S8 series back in April 2017. The Galaxy S7 series is still the smartphone to beat in terms of volume as the two-year old phone sold 9 million units during its first month. Interestingly, the source notes that Samsung has been investing more in its dual-camera S9 Plus as 1 million of the 8 million total units shipped were S9 Plus models bound for the United States. In fact, nearly half of the 8 million units produced were made specifically for the North American market.
Samsung has been offering discounts and aggressive trade-in programs to drive sales of its S9 series. The Galaxy S7 series managed to sell 48 million during its first year compared to 41 million from the Galaxy S8 series. Should the discounts and marketing push continue, Canalys is predicting a total of about 45 million Galaxy S9 units sold throughout the rest of the 2018.
The highly anticipated Galaxy Note 9 has yet to launch but early reports are already claiming that the next Note could come early due to the relatively unexceptional sales performance of the Galaxy S9 thus far.