Samsung's latest flagship devices, the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge, officially hit the stores on April 10. Prior to their release, Samsung said that pre-orders for the devices have already reached more than 20 million, giving them the notion that they're back on track. However, a high-ranking Samsung official said that sales of the Galaxy S6 have already gone beyond 10 million which seemed quite odd and falls short of the company's initial expectations.
Samsung had high hopes for the new Galaxy S6 flagship devices. The company even touted it as an "iPhone killer." Design-wise, it is regarded as one of the most attractive smartphones that the company has ever made. Some of its impressive features include a sleek and metal glass design, a unique-dual edged display, and a removable battery. The company had also released the devices in their new customized designs. Customers can choose between the Blue Topaz Galaxy S6 and the Green Emerald Galaxy S6 Edge. Moreover, Samsung also released the premium versions of the devices meant for "premium-minded" customers. Designed by Goldgenie, the premium versions include Rose Gold, Platinum and 24-karat Gold.
"The sales of the Galaxy S6 series have already surpassed 10 million," a high-ranking Samsung official said.
For the sake of comparison, Samsung's previous flagship, the Galaxy S5, shipped 11 million units on the first month since it launched and in the same period a year ago. However, these are shipments and not sales which could mean that the number of sold devices could be lower.
Samsung needed the Galaxy S6 to succeed in order to make up for the S5's frustrating record of sales. Despite all the media fanfare and publicity effort, a new report said that the company's latest flagships are bound to suffer the same fate as their predecessor. In fact, they even described Samsung's flagship business as heading towards the road of imploding.
Investment bank Oppenheimer said in a research note on Apple that fundamentally speaking, Samsung seemed misguided in their strategy.
"When we look at Samsung's flagship in 2015, the Galaxy S6 Edge, almost all of its differentiators fall back to hardware: a cutting-edge CPU, curved display, iPhone-like metal casing, front area fingerprint sensor, and camera with OIS. At the same time, we see little improvement in Samsung's software user experience, and no value-added to existing Samsung users who are on prior generations of devices."
In other words, Samsung may have failed to give a standout reason why customers should purchase the new Galaxy flagships.
At this point, it's still early to say whether the Galaxy S6 will indeed place the company back on the lead spot it had enjoyed only a year ago. Samsung estimated that the new flagships will sell 70 million units before the year ends. The company is yet to release an official statement of the total number of sales yielded during the first quarter of the year.
