If you were among the ones waiting in line to get their hands on the newest and coolest flagship cell phone from Samsung, the Galaxy S5 and you are still in awe because its features, you aren’t the only one. During the official release day, stores in many parts of the world have witnessed long lines of eager customers, in a phenomenon similar to Apple’s release days, but not quite equally spectacular. The Samsung Galaxy S5 is one of the coolest mobile gadgets of the year and it is meant as a worthy competitor to Apple’s iPhones, although, if you read yesterday’s news, Apple (together with a handful of experts) doesn’t fear the Samsung Galaxy S5 and doesn’t even consider it a remarkable challenger in the smartphone market of this year, and perhaps this is why Apple is rumored to have started negotiations for pushing the iPhone 6 price with $100 more.
But until those rumors are confirmed or the new iPhone 6 will undeniably conquer the market this year, the news we have access to told us that upon release day, the Samsung Galaxy S5 sold big and even spectacular, while market analyses tell us that Samsung Galaxy S5 will sell bigger in the future.
Let’s take a look at things from a financial perspective:
On launch-day Galaxy S5 sales in regions across Europe were between 30% and 100% higher than Galaxy S4 sales were last year on the day the phone was released. The report noted that sell-outs were recorded in many stores across the region, and it said sales were very strong in Australia and India as well.
So can you forget about your S4 and jump in to get the Samsung Galaxy S5? Well, many did, as similar reports said that the sales on the S5 release day even doubled S4 sales in some markets and people stood in line in major cities and countries, including London, the Netherlands and Singapore. However, other reporters complained that not even in Seoul people didn’t take their tents to sleep over night in front of the stores like Apple fans do, emphasizing that Samsung still has a long way to go until it will manage to gather cohorts of people waiting for hours in a line, just to get their hands on the latest smartphone available.
But Samsung employed a different sales strategy before the long – awaited release day: it allowed people in the U.S. to preorder the flagship smartphone from partner carriers, thus avoiding the situation of lines forming. At the end of the day, however, it mattered less who stood in line and who purchased the phone online, the Samsung Galaxy S5 sold big and had a pretty impressive start so far. Of course, now everybody is waiting for Apple’s iPhone 6 and its rumored higher price to show what it can do.