Samsung says it has sold a million Galaxy Fold units

Update 17/12/19: In an odd turn of events, Samsung has gone back on the below claim that the Fold has sold one million units. “Sohn may have confused the figure with the company’s initial sales target for the year, emphasizing that sales of the tech firm’s first foldable handset have not reached 1 million units,” reports Yonhap News Agency, a statement Samsung has confirmed as true.

While the company maintains sales figures are closer to its former estimate of 500,000, the public mistake is a tad galling and is in step with the Fold’s troubled existence.

Our original story is below.

Samsung Electronic’s President Young Sohn has said that the company has sold one million units of the Galaxy Fold. The foldable smartphone device was launched officially in September and is sold in select regions worldwide for an RRP of USD $1,980.

Sohn announced the figure onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin, saying: “I think that the point is, we’re selling [a] million of these products. There’s a million people that want to use this product at $2,000.”

Samsung had estimated in October that it had sold half a million Folds, so if both figures are correct it represents a significant stock shift for a product that was cancelled after American reviewers had manufacturing issues. The phone was redesigned to have a screen that didn’t look like it had a peelable layer and T-clamps on the hinge to stop dirt getting under the folding plastic display.

Of course, one million units of a phone is not many in the grand scheme of the market. Samsung itself sold over 6 million Galaxy S10 Plus units in the first quarter of availability, and is the most popular smartphone manufacturer worldwide. But it is significant that a million people have put down that much money for a first-generation piece of technology.

We haven’t seen any Folds in the wild yet in the UK. Sales are presumably much higher in Samsung’s native South Korea and other Asian markets.