The Galaxy Fold has become perhaps the most problematic Samsung smartphone since the Galaxy Note 7. Of course, the foldable device was not prone to spontaneous combustion (although who knows?), But without that it caused enough trouble for its manufacturer. At first, the crooked bloggers – who only allowed them to the technology – managed to tear off the protective film, which could not be removed at all. Then the engineers broke the folding mechanism twice as fast as it should have. Well, in the end, someone from the company's management, obviously wanting to show off their intelligence, said that Samsung sold a million Galaxy Folds, which turned out to be untrue. But where is the truth?
Galaxy Fold gave Samsung a lot of problems before it was released and continues to do so.
Despite the fact that the Galaxy Fold has been on sale for more than two months, Samsung regularly pretends not to count how many smartphones were actually sold during this time. Anyway, the CEO of the mobile division of the company, Dong-Jin Koh, said that Samsung was able to sell 400 to 500 thousand Galaxy Folds. It would seem, well, what's wrong with that, maybe the Koreans really don't think? But it is impossible to believe that the company's management does not have accurate information and therefore hangs on our ears, naming numbers with an error of 20%.
“I think we've sold somewhere between 400,000-500,000 Galaxy Folds over the years,” Dong-Jin Koh admitted in an interview with the Korean news agency Ryonghap.
Why Samsung is silent
Samsung Mobile CEO doesn't want to admit how much Galaxy Fold they sold
This can only happen in three cases. The first is that Samsung doesn't care how the Galaxy Fold sells. But we know for sure that this is not the case. After all, it is unlikely that the company will treat the product in this way, on the creation of which it spent at least five years, and then was forced to urgently redo it right before the start of sales. The second case where the CEO may remain in the dark is his complete incompetence. But this is clearly not the case. After all, it is Dong-Jin Koh who has been regularly running the company for many years and under his leadership, its revenue has been growing from year to year.
This means that the third option remains – the most embarrassing. Undoubtedly, Dong-Jin Koh is lying about not knowing how much Galaxy Fold actually sold. He does this deliberately because Samsung has promised to sell half a million foldable smartphones by the end of 2019. And since the promise has been given, it means that it is necessary to report on its fulfillment, which the top manager does, however, in a somewhat veiled form. He does not admit that Samsung did not keep its word, but, as it were, leaves room for itself to maneuver, arguing that the final figure may well correspond to the originally planned one. Or maybe not. But it’s better not to think about it, Koch decided.
How many Galaxy Fold were sold
Even if Samsung sold 400,000 Galaxy Folds, and not 500 as originally promised, it's still a great figure. Still, it is worth a lot to be able to attract such an audience to such a non-trivial device in terms of execution and price. But the Koreans succeeded. That is why it seems strange that they are embarrassed to admit that they did not cope with the originally set target and could not sell as many smartphones as they wanted. After all, neither Huawei nor Motorola most likely never dreamed of such numbers. But Samsung, as always, drove itself into a corner, in which, moreover, it also managed to get lost.