Just as Apple officially unveiled its trend-setting line of smartwatches on Monday, Samsung Electronics countered with a reported 20 million pre-orders for the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge.
The company's flagship smartphones, set to be released April 10 worldwide, set a pre-sale record that may lead Samsung to surpass IPhone 6 and 6 Plus first-weekend sales of 10 million. Though the orders don't necessarily reflect projected sales, they are a helpful in gauging the Galaxy brand's impact on the market.
Retailers in the Netherlands were first to receive pre-orders, pricing the entry-level 32-gigabite S6 at 700 euros, or about $760. The Edge S6 amounts to $925. Pricing for Swiss users begins at 653 euros for the S6 and 793 for the Edge after conversion from Swiss francs. Both models are priced lower when compared to those in Italy and Sweden.
A specific street price in the United States hasn't been announced but if a leaked T-Mobile contest is to be believed, the standard S6 will retail at $699. Verizon hasn't set a ship date but did mark April 1 as the first day for deposits. Competitors Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T haven't disclosed as much.
"We think the components side of the S6 is more positive for Samsung's earnings direction, with the processor moving internally (saving potentially $28 a phone), significantly more memory (DRAM and particularly NAND) and the display showing off their technology lead in flexible OLED," Hong Kong-based researcher Mark C. Newman said in an interview with the Korea Times.
With a curved edge on both sides of the display and a built-in heart rate monitor, the S6 Edge is an upgrade over its predecessor, the Note Edge. Text wrapped around the edge makes it especially easy for left-handed users who can choose what side they want features to scroll down.
Android lovers' biggest gripes are a lack of expendable storage and no waterproof exterior. The non-removable backplate has some criticizing Samsung for modeling the new Galaxies' too similarly to Apple's IPhones. Samsung, for their part, eased storage limit concerns by offering the Galaxy S6 with internal storage up to 128GB
"It's no surprise to see that Samsung received historically high pre-orders of the recent phone," said Lee Min-ah, an analyst at Korean brokerage firm Hi Investments. "But the key point is how the first set a competitive price for the entry-level model."
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