Samsung Sold Fewer Than 500,000 Galaxy Folds in 2019

Photo credit: Yonhap

Samsung president and CEO Koh Dong-jin said at CES this week that Samsung has sold between 400,000 and 500,000 Galaxy Fold smartphones. That’s a far smaller number than the 1 million figure that was rumored in December.

“I think we’ve sold 400,000 to 500,000 Galaxy Fold smartphones,” Koh told reporters at CES, according to the Yonhap News Agency in Korea.

That sales range is rather broad, and while Koh seems surprisingly unsure of the correct figure, it’s still roughly inline with what analysts expected, given the Fold’s aborted original launch in June 2019 and subsequent relaunch in September. Samsung said then that it expected to sell 500,000 units in 2019.

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So sales are a bit on the low side. But they’re also a lot smaller than the number of Folds that Samsung executive Sohn Young-kwon claimed the firm had sold, 1 million, in December. Samsung quickly denied that claim, of course, noting at the time only that it had not yet sold 1 million units.

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Conversation 3 comments

  • abillimore

    09 January, 2020 - 8:44 am

    <p>I'm more surprised by a number that large for something that isn't really that compelling a product.</p>

  • mmcpher

    Premium Member
    09 January, 2020 - 5:20 pm

    <p>It's hard to have a frame of reference on the Fold because, in addition to the launch issues, it was an enormously expensive first-gen device. I remain interested in that form-factor (much more than the clam-shell variant) and followed it closely, but after the initial marketing fanfare was snuffed out by the screen issues, the relaunch was widely reported, rather than widely advertised or promoted, at least round these parts. All of this devalues, to some extent, the feedback from the launch, in terms of demand, experience, usability. . . . I recall the early days of the large-phone Samsung Note, initially derided, then ignored but eventually enough people bucked the trends and the critics and found merit in the form factor that the tail wagged the dog and everything got larger. Didn't happen overnight, but incrementally. Manufacturers began making their standard units larger, prefatory to offering XL versions, and app developers began to think about and design for the added screen real estate. I know the majority view here and elsewhere is to be dismissive of the Fold and its like, as not being the actual game-changing, future-bringing device itself, but it will be interesting to see if the ground starts shifting again. </p>

  • Saarek

    10 January, 2020 - 6:37 am

    <p>Are they able to claim sales for devices that they gave away? I assume a fair few of this number is made up of devices sent out to reviewers and testers, no?</p>

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