Samsung expected to sell over 40 million Galaxy S8 units

Samsung may sell well over 40 million Galaxy S8 and S8+ units, a new report has claimed.

Samsung may end up selling at least 40 million Galaxy S8 and S8+ handsets, analysts said. (Samsung)

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 and 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.