Despite all the early hiccups and flaws and a steep $2,000 price tag, Samsung has managed to sell 1 million units of the Galaxy Fold worldwide, its first foldable device.
The number was revealed by Samsung Electronics" President Young Sohn at the TechCrunch Disrupt in Berlin. The company was estimated to have sold around 500K units of the Galaxy Fold back in October.
Sohn used the sales figure to justify selling the Galaxy Fold for $2,000 despite its experimental nature and reliability issues. He added that Samsung releases such products to the market to get user feedback which would not have been possible if the Fold never made it out of the labs.
“And I think that the point is, we’re selling [a] million of these products. There’s a million people that want to use this product at $2,000.”
Samsung is now estimated to sell 6 million foldable devices in 2020. The company is reportedly launching a foldable clamshell device alongside the Galaxy S11 in February next year.
The Galaxy Fold has had a very rocky start after it was first announced at MWC 2019 in February. Just a few days before its launch in April, reviewers discovered major reliability issues with the device and its display due to dust ingress and other design flaws. This led Samsung to cancel all pre-orders, postpone the launch indefinitely and recall all review units of the Galaxy Fold that it had sent out.
After a few months, the company got around to re-releasing the Galaxy Fold in September with a tweaked design that was more durable.
Update: Turns out, Samsung has not sold 1 million Galaxy Fold units and Young Sohn seemingly got confused with the company"s internal sales target. The company refused to reveal the actual number of Galaxy Fold units it has sold so far.
Source: TechCrunch