Despite surprisingly strong Galaxy S23 series sales, Samsung is not out of its slump… yet،
While most smartphone makers would probably be happy to sell more than 100 million units or even come close to that number in a given year, Samsung must have been disappointed to end 2023 with “only” 226 .6 million shipments worldwide according to Independent market research from IDC.
That's both because that number was down from the company's 2022 total of more than 260 million units and because Apple managed to surpass Samsung's global total for an entire year for the first time in the history of the mobile industry.
No doubt hurt by this unprecedented loss, the former king of the smartphone market started the year 2024 with an early lead.
Galaxy S24 launch of the
series which appeared to be a resounding success by just about all indications. But what about all the other Galaxy handsets and their cumulative sales results in January?
So many interesting figures to discuss
As you might imagine, Samsung isn't very keen on officially revealing the exact performance of each of its high-end phones at the global box office, but that's where
a generally reliable X tipster arrives todayreporting third-party data apparently gathered by an investment banking firm called Hana Securities.
While this obviously means that all of these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, there's really no reason to doubt the legitimacy of the project. Galaxy S23 The family's year-over-year sales total 31.11 million units, for example.
That would make the S23, S23 Plus, and S23 Ultra significantly more popular than the S22 trio released in 2022, mind you, which barely reached 24.99 million units shipped in its first year of availability.
Another interesting statistic disclosed by Revegnus today refers to the sales performance of each individual S23 model, with the Ultra seemingly eclipsing the “Basic” and Plus versions at 14.34 versus 11.08 and 5.68 million units respectively.
While this pecking order is far from surprising, one has to wonder if it's really necessary for Samsung to release its flagships in three variants these days, with the Plus models consistently pulling in much lower numbers than their siblings and sisters and therefore seeming less and less attractive to the masses.
Even more statistics (positive and negative) to ponder
Although the S23 trio has significantly outperformed the S22 lineup and the S24 family is off to a good
start according to multiple sources, Samsung's overall smartphone sales in 2023 have been disappointing (at best) and the same goes for the total of 17.44 million units of the company in January 2024.
The latter figure is down 11% from December 2023 and just 1% from January 2023, which is… still not great. So, which phones are responsible for these mediocre results (at best) if the S23 and S24 series perform wonderfully.
The mid-range Galaxy A's are obviously the prime suspects, but Samsung can't be thrilled with the numbers generated by its latest high-end foldables either. The Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5 have apparently sold 4.33 million and 2.49 million copies respectively in their first six months on sale, more or less matching the 4.2 and 2.6 million units sold respectively. Units shipped of the Z Flip 4 and Z Fold 4 respectively during the month. same period last year.
That's the kind of stagnation you never want to see happen in an otherwise rapidly growing market segment, where rival brands are undoubtedly improving their sales results quarter after quarter. On the bright side, at least Samsung's Z series shipments aren't decreasing…yet.
Last but not least, if we still have to quantify the (early) success of the S24 family, it seems that Samsung sold 1.42 million units of these bad boys at the end of January alone, including 830,000 Ultras, 320,000 of the “vanilla” flagships, and only 270,000 were Plus models.
These are a trio of premium phones that just started shipping globally on January 24. This is therefore only the last in an already long series of important figures highlighting the very strong demand generated so far by these very good smartphones.
