Showing that the firey Galaxy Note 7 disaster hasn’t hampered consumer demand for the Galaxy S8 range, Samsung has announced today that the Galaxy S8 pre-orders have “broken all records”.
Just as the late Steve Jobs proclaimed that each new iPhone was the best ever, Samsung has proclaimed the Galaxy S8 the most successful launch ever, and while we don’t have precise numbers, but we know that the Galaxy Note 7 (literally) set the record books on fire with 51,060 handsets sold in the first two weeks in Australia, before it spectacularly failed and was eventually recalled.
Jokes aside, it seems that while they won’t reveal numbers, Samsung are pretty happy with how sales are tracking. Samsung Australia’s Richard Fink said that pre-orders for the Galaxy S8 range were outselling the previous flagship phone by ‘double-digit percentage points’, showing that consumers are ‘just excited about this phone’.
Mr Fink said:
“It’s not just us but globally — all the markets are reporting double-digit growth on the S7 launch.
“Australians like big-screen phones, and the screen dimensions are something different.”
This, despite the phone not actually being on show anywhere; the only people in Australia who’ve seen Samsung’s new Galaxy S8 range are a select group of journalists who were flown to Samsung’s global launch in New York, or who attended briefings yesterday in Sydney. Consumers know only what they’ve seen from hands-on reviews and first impressions published widely, and from the launch event from Samsung themselves.
The pre-orders are performing rather well, clearly, despite one of the biggest points of differentiation not actually promised for Australia at launch. Samsung have confirmed that its Bixby AI won’t recognise Australian voices at launch, and so the voice recognition technology won’t be present on retail devices sold here.
We understand it will likely come to Australia “in coming months”, and in the meantime, users will have to make do with suggestions from their calendars, the ability to recognise photos of landmarks and other parlour tricks.
Samsung’s Galaxy S8 range goes on sale on 28th April, with pre-orders shipping next week to arrive on the 21st.
There’s going to be a flurry of new Android apps that re-map the Bixby button to whatever you want. With Bixby not working to its fullest extent at launch, a lot of people will find re-mapping the button very useful. This will mean that when Bixby does eventuate, people will find it inconvenient to use. RIP Bixby.
Looks like an excellent phone. Pity about Bixby, but I’d probably rather have Google Assistant on it anyway.