Samsung expected to sell over 40 million Galaxy S8 units

Seoul: The combined sales of Samsung Electronics new flagship Galaxy S8 series, which will officially hit the shelves later this month, are expected to surpass the 40-million-unit-mark, industry data showed on Friday.

South Korea`s brokerage houses estimated the sales of the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus to be around 43-60 million units, Yonhap news agency reported.

Eugene Investment & Securities Co predicted the highest figure of 60 million, while Mirae Asset Daewoo Co expected 51 million units. Samsung Securities Co, a financial arm of Samsung, forecast 45 million phones being sold overall.

"As for the Galaxy S models, we can say that a figure around 35 million units can be considered to fall below expectations, while that above 45 million is robust," said Hwang Min-sung, a researcher from Samsung Securities Co.

"This year`s sales of the Galaxy S8 are not expected to beat the 48 million units posted by the Galaxy S7 last year," Hwang added.`

Samsung launched S8 in two screen sizes -- the 5.8-inch Galaxy S8 and 6.2-inch Galaxy S8 Plus -- and will be available from April 21.

The device has a bezel-less curved edge "infinity display" covered with pristine glass and a 12MP rear camera with multi-frame processing and optical image stabilisation. It has an 8MP auto-focus front shooter.

Available in five different colours, the device has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 octa-core (2.35GHz quad + 1.7GHz quad) processor. For models that will be available in countries other than the US, Samsung has used Exynos octa-core (2.35 GHz quad + 1.9 GHZ quad) processor.

The company has also upped the security feature with iris scanner, face recognition and fingerprint scanner -- moved to the back of the device -- to unlock the device.