Samsung Galaxy S4 Shipments Touch 10 Million Units Within A Month Of Launch; New Color Variants Underway

Samsung’s latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4, has hit 10 million global channel sales within a month of its commercial launch in late April, the company announced on Thursday.

The sales figures for the Galaxy S4 have set a new record for the South Korean tech giant's smartphones, making it the company’s fastest-moving handset ever. According to the company, it is selling four Galaxy S4 units per second worldwide.

Galaxy S4 sales to retailers exceeded 10 million in only 27 days while the Galaxy S3 took 50 days to reach the same figure. The Galaxy S2 reached that milestone in five months.

“On behalf of Samsung, I would like to thank the millions of customers around the world who have chosen the Samsung Galaxy S4. At Samsung we’ll continue to pursue innovation inspired by and for people,” SamMobile quoted JK Shin, head of the company's IT and mobile communications divisions, as saying.

Samsung said it is selling the Galaxy S4 in 60 countries and plans to expand sales to 327 carriers in 155 countries by next month, Reuters reported.

The report also quoted industry analysts who expect the Galaxy S4 to help the company post record earnings in the current quarter. The handset is also expected to help Samsung maintain its lead in the $225 billion smartphone market worldwide.

It was expected quite early that the Galaxy S4’s initial shipments would surpass 10 million units.

“We are confident that we will pass more than 10 million sales of the S4 next week. It is selling much faster than previous models S3,” the Korean Times quoted Shin as saying, last week.

However, as The Verge noted, what Samsung is actually reporting here is the Galaxy S4’s global channel sales, not direct sales to consumers. Therefore, the sales figure of 10 million units should be “on the ‘shipped’ side of the sold.”

“The figure is controversial because shipped phones could theoretically be waiting on store shelves without having been purchased by customers,” noted the report. “In comparison, when Apple announced it sold 5 million units of the iPhone 5 in its first weekend, it was referring to actual sales to end users.”

In addition, Samsung is also reportedly planning to introduce more color variants of the Galaxy S4. Apart from the currently available “White Mist” and “Black Forest,” the company is expected to add four new colors this summer, including “Blue Arctic,” “Red Aurora,” “Mirage,” and “Brown Autumn.”

Samsung accounted for 30.8 percent of worldwide smartphone sales in the first quarter of this year, while Apple suffered a drop in market share and came in a distant second on the list with an 18 percent share, according to research firm Gartner.