Galaxy S4 reportedly hits 40m sales, roughly on par with S3
Samsung's fourth Galaxy S phone may be selling at a slower pace than its predecessor.
Samsung's Galaxy S4 has reportedly hit the 40 million sales mark, suggesting that there's still plenty of love for the 5-inch smart phone.
A Samsung exec said the quad-core beauty has now tipped over the big 4-0, according to a report in Korean-language site inews24. I've contacted Samsung for confirmation, and I'll let you know if I hear anything back.
The Galaxy S4 went on sale in the UK on 27 April, with sales reckoned to have hit 10 million just under four weeks later.
Just over two months after that, in early July, the 20 million milestone was hit, suggesting that sales may have slowed ever so slightly during the summer, or at least levelled out.
Crunching numbers
If genuine, that's a very impressive number of smart phones to sell -- but how does it compare to last year's Galaxy S3?
The Galaxy S3 hit 20m sales in early September, then 40m in mid-January, approximately 131 days later.
Assuming that Samsung really has recently sold 40 million Galaxy S4s, and assuming that it did hit 20m in early July, we can estimate that the time it took for Samsung to make the jump from 20 to 40 million sales was roughly 114 days, which is two weeks faster than the figure we calculated for the S3.
All these numbers should be taken with a pinch of salt, as it's hard to know precisely when particular milestones were met, and Samsung's numbers generally represent sales to retailers, rather than sales to actual individuals. That said, it appears that the Galaxy S4 may be selling at roughly the same pace as last year's S3.
Whether Samsung's happy with that is tough to know. It's definitely a lot of phones to flog, but I suspect the South Korean tech giant will have been hoping for sales that significantly outpace last year's edition.
We've already heard whispers of a Galaxy S4 sales slump, which is rumoured to have Samsung bolting together the Galaxy S5 in time for a January reveal.
Are you a Galaxy S4 fan? Do you think its popularity could be waning, or is it still a superstar smart phone? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook wall.
