A month after Samsung found itself in the somewhat embarrassing position of having to use a spokesman to correct an erroneous Galaxy Fold sales estimate from one of the company’s own executives, another Samsung executive has taken a stab at sharing a sales estimate for the much-ballyhooed foldable phone.
Speaking to reporters during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, Samsung’s mobile chief DJ Koh shared an updated range — 400,000 to 500,000 sales of the Galaxy Fold so far, which is certainly a big contrast from the 1 million units that Samsung Electronics president Young Sohn asserted during a recent TechCrunch event. To be fair, that is certainly an impressive range, regardless, when you consider how many early problems the phone exhibited in addition to its exorbitant price tag ($1,980).
However, it’s also a range, and not an exact number. It does seem strange that Samsung appears to be having problems identifying an actual number, unless it’s that Samsung doesn’t want to be that precise. Putting a number out there, walking it back, then sharing a vague range instead of a hard number — I suppose it’s part and parcel of how weird the Galaxy Fold’s first year was.
At least the estimate that Koh shared this week is in line with what analysts had been expecting. According to Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, analysts had estimated sales of between 400,000 and 500,000 Galaxy Fold units sold between the phone’s launch and the end of 2019. So if Koh’s range is indeed accurate, and there’s no reason to believe otherwise, at least the company didn’t surprise to the downside.
Perhaps the successor to the Galaxy Fold that Samsung’s planning to unveil a little more than a month from now will fare better. The expectation is that a new clamshell foldable that may or may not be called the Fold 2 will be introduced alongside the new Galaxy S20 series at a Samsung event on February 11. Early renderings of the new foldable have depicted a rather gorgeous handset with a design reminiscent of the Motorola RAZR that was introduced last month, with features including new glass for the display that’s more scratch-resistant while also as thin as human hair.
