[Namkung Jinwoong = timeid@ajunews.com]
It's still early to say whether Samsung's Galaxy S8 will be a big hit, but the new flagship received a good initial response in the domestic market with some 550,000 pre-orders for two days during the weekend, nearly six times more than those of its Galaxy S7 series.
In the smartphone market, the number of pre-orders made is a good barometer for expecting how big shot the new smartphone would be. Samsung's previous model, S7, and its variant S7 Edge recorded about 100,000 pre-orders at home on its first weekend in March last year. About 48 million S7 and S7 Edge units were sold worldwide in 2016, according to a market research firm, IHS.
Only in view of S8's weekend pre-orders, S8 is going to hit the jackpot. The S8 hype was also witnessed at offline stores. "I think there are about seven times more consumers visiting our store for S8 than those who made pre-orders for S7," an employee at Samsung's official electronics outlet in Seoul told Aju News.
"Consumers are making about four or five times more inquiries, compared to LG's G6," said an employee at an authorized dealer store of KT, South Korea's largest telephone company. "About 10 customers used to open mobile phone accounts every day but now we have about 50 customers."
LG had about 40,000 pre-orders for G6 during its first four days in early March.
Park Sae-jin = swatchsjp@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
