Samsung's first foldable phone, the Galaxy Fold, ran into a series of embarrassing incidents before it went on sale. As a result, how much sales volume it could achieve has become a topic of concern.
According to a report by The Verge on December 12, Samsung Electronics President Young Sohn revealed at a event held in Berlin on Thursday that the Galaxy Fold has sold 1 million units.
The report said that although this foldable phone met with difficulties during the listing process and was exposed to reliability issues, while Young Sohn said: "One million consumers are willing to use this product for the price of 2,000 US dollars (about 14,000 yuan)."
A Samsung spokesman soon denied the report, saying Young Sohn may have confused this number with the company's initial sales target for this year, emphasizing that Samsung ’s first folding screen phone has yet to reach 1 million units of sales, according to Yonhap.
Galaxy Fold was officially launched in China on November 8, priced at 15,999 yuan but does not support 5G networks. The Huawei foldable mobile phone Mate X, which was listed one week later, did not disclose sales at 16,999 yuan, and users still can barely buy one as it was always sold out in seconds.
As early as this year, Samsung and Huawei have launched foldable phones, but have repeatedly delayed listing for different reasons.
One week before the initial release date (April 21), the Galaxy Fold suffered an "embarrassing incident": Test machines received by a number of foreign media, including CNBC and Bloomberg, had various failures involving screens Flicker, cracked screen, raised hinges, etc.
In an interview with The Verge at the end of June, Kwon Oh-hyun, president of Samsung’s mobile division, said that Samsung had made some deviations in the foldable phone.
On September 6, the Galaxy Fold finally went on sale in Korea after some twists and turns. The 5G version is equipped with the Snapdragon 855 + X50 5G baseband and is priced at 2.398 million won (about RMB 14335.4). According to Samsung, the first Galaxy Fold sold out as soon as it went on the market.
However, the seemingly popular Galaxy Fold has not been satisfactory. According to the Yonhap News Agency at the time, after using this phone, Korean consumers found that the problem of “the left and right screens are out of sync and scroll like waves” that appeared before the sale still exists.
Samsung responded by saying that it has made every effort to improve the product. This problem is the characteristics of the large screen and there is also a powerless part. The company also said that these issues are also related to the user's sensitivity to use and are not part of the return.
On November 8, the Galaxy Fold was officially launched in China. According to Observer.com, the model was sold out on Samsung Online Store, JD.com, Tmall and other platforms less than 5 minutes after the model was launched. On the morning of the double eleventh day, Samsung launched the second round of sales and was sold out again.
At present, this foldable phone can be purchased normally in Samsung official stores such as Tmall and JD.com. As of press time, the phone showed 573 monthly sales in the official Tmall Samsung flagship store, and it has received 1990+ evaluations in JD Samsung official flagship store.
The Huawei Mate X was first released on February 24 this year. At that time, the overseas version was priced at 2299 Euros, but Huawei said at the time that it would also conduct 5G testing with operators, which caused the National Bank version to be repeatedly delayed.
Eight months later, on October 23, the Mate X National Bank Edition was released. At the launch site, He Gang, president of Huawei’s consumer business mobile phone product line, announced that the 8GB + 512GB version is priced at 16999 yuan and will be sold in limited quantities on Huawei Mall on November 15.
In an interview with media including Observer.com after the press conference, He Gang stated that there is no target for the sales of Mate X and he will continue to optimize the product. He also revealed that Mate Xs equipped with Kirin 990 5G Soc chip will be available in March 2020.
Observer.com noticed that in the multiple rounds of buying since November 15, Mate X was almost "out of seconds". This also caused customers to question: insufficient supply capacity, hungry marketing.
In this regard, Huawei said: "Our product appearance and configuration features are very outstanding, and are currently being welcomed by many users, please understand. I believe we will continue to improve every detail to give you a more perfect shopping experience."
In addition to Huawei and Samsung foldable phones already on sale, Lenovo also released the first foldable smartphone Motorola Razr on November 15. The Razr is equipped with a 6.2-inch foldable OLED display, equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 processor, and runs the Android9Pie operating system. The price is $ 1,499 (about 10,525 yuan).
