Samsung expects Galaxy S III sales to reach 10mn in July

Samsung Electronics, the manufacturer of the Samsung Galaxy S III, arguably one of the hottest phones available today, expects the smartphone's sales to touch the 10 million mark in July. Prior to the phone's launch, Samsung had announced that it had already received  9 million pre-orders, and the company says the phone has been received well across the world since its launch. As per a report by Reuters, Samsung expects the success of the Galaxy S III to propel its handset dvision to post strong second quarter earnings.

“Samsung Electronics Co expects sales of its new Galaxy S III, launched at the end of last month as a main rival to Apple's iPhone, to top 10 million during July, making it the South Korean group's fastest selling smartphone. It also predicted earnings from its handset division would be higher in the current second quarter than in January-March, countering market concerns that tight supplies of the new Galaxy model and the weak global economy would pressure earnings at Asia's most valuable technology firm,” the report stated.

Galaxy S III could propel Samsung's Q2 results

JK Shin, head of Samsung's mobile division, in an interview with reporters said that the overall market condition was challenging due to euro zone issues and tight supply of components but their second quarter results will be better than their first quarter. The report goes on to state, “Profit from Samsung's mobile division nearly trebled in January-March to $3.6 billion, accounting for 73 percent of group operating profit. Samsung kicked off global sales of its Galaxy S III on May 29, but shipments have been affected by the tight supply of parts such as the handset casing for the pebble-blue model.”

Commenting on the situation, Shin said that due to strong demand and component shortages, supply remains very tight. However, he said Samsung expects the supply conditions to improve from next week. Earlier, in April,  Samsung pointed out that the Galaxy smartphones would contribute substantially to the company's second-quarter results.

The report by Reuters goes on to state, “Analysts have downgraded estimates for Samsung's second-quarter smartphone shipments in recent weeks, predicting that sales of the latest Galaxy model have triggered a steeper than expected drop-off in sales of earlier products. They also cited tight supply of the S III model and growing competition from low-end manufacturers such as Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp.”

Samsung sold 44.5 million smartphones in the first quarter of the year; nearly 21,000 phones sold every hour, giving it a market share of 30.6%.

Here is a quick look at the highlighted features of the Samsung Galaxy S III

• 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1280 x 720
• 3G, EDGE/GPRS, Wi-Fi with, DLNA support
• GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS,
• USB 2.0, Bluetooth 4.0
• 8MP camera with AF, LED flash, BSI sensor and 1080p HD video recording
• 1.9MP front facing camera with a resolution of 720p for video chat
• 16/32/64GB Internal memory, expandable up to 64GB
• HDMI out