Samsung Galaxy Note A Hit, Sells 5 Million Units Worldwide In 5 Months

South Korean technology giant Samsung has announced that it has sold five million units of its Galaxy Note smartphone or phablet (phone+tablet) in five months.

Although the numbers look very less when compared to Apple's iPhone 4S (four million units in 3 days), it's still a decent figure considering that it managed to bring in around $2 billion worth of revenue over 150 days, ITProPortal reported.

Kicking off with a new debut weekend sales record, the iPhone 4S turned out to be a major contributor for Apple's record-breaking sales during the third quarter of 2011. In the quarterly report, the biggest of all numbers that caught everyone's attention was the number of iPhones sold, it was 37.04 million, compared to the expected 30.2 million.

The Samsung Galaxy Note, with a massive 5.3-inch Super AMOLED screen, gained much attention at CES 2012 in Las Vegas in January. The device hit the stores in the UK late last year. In the US, it started shipping from Feb. 19. Given that, its sales and shipment figures are likely to increase when Samsung starts selling it in other territories, the ITProPortal report added.

Since its release in the US, the Galaxy Note has largely flown under the radar as Apple's new iPad and low-cost Android-based tablets such as Amazon's $199 Kindle Fire attracted much of the media attention. The device also faced criticism for its larger size with some critics saying that it is far too large to have any legitimate use as a smartphone, PC Advisor reported.

Adding to its large screen, the Galaxy Note has a 1,280 x 800 pixels capacitive touchscreen with Corning's Gorilla glass, a dual core Samsung Exynos processor clocked at 1.4GHz, 1GB RAM, 16GB onboard storage and an eight megapixel camera with a front facing one.

The device also comes with WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, a microSD card slot, microUSB, a massive 2500mAh battery and runs on Android 2.35 Gingerbread with a layer of TouchWiz 4.0. It is one of the devices slated to receive an upgrade to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) over the next few weeks.

In the US, AT&T currently sells the Galaxy Note for $300 with a two-year contract.