10 million Galaxy S4 phones sold in less than a month

Galaxy S4 hits the milestone in half the time it took the S3, four new colors coming soon

Just last week, Samsung Electronics co-CEO Shin Jong-kyun told reporters that he believed that the Galaxy S4 would hit the 10 million mark this week. Not only did that prediction come true, but the S4 has now become the one of the fastest selling Samsung phone of all time.

The phone has sold more than 10 million units less than one month after its commercial debut on April 27th, it was announced in a press release on Thursday. Samsung is now estimating that the phone is selling at a rate of four units every second. 

To show how impressive a number that is, lets compare how long it took  previous Samsung phones to reach the same number of units. Last year, it took the Galaxy S III 50 days to get to 10 million sold, nearly twice as long as it took the S4. The Galaxy S II took five months, and the Galaxy S took seven months. 

“On behalf of Samsung, I would like to thank the millions of customers around the world who have chosen the Samsung GALAXY S4. At Samsung we’ll continue to pursue innovation inspired by and for people,” JK Shin, CEO and President of the IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics, said in a statement.

It should be noted that what Samsung is talking about here are "channel sales," meaning how units have been sold to retailers and operators rather than consumers. So these are not direct sale numbers, but rather how many phones have been stocked. It's not hard to extrapolate, though, that retailers would only be buying more phones if customers were buying them and they needed to restock. The stores would obviously not be ordered more of a phone that was sitting on the shelf.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is currently available in more than 110 countries and Samsung says that it will eventually be rolled out to a total of 155 countries, in cooperation with 327 partners. 

Samsung also announced that the phone will be coming out in new colors in the coming weeks.

Right now, the phones in White Mist and Black Forest, and Samsung will be adding at least four new colors: Blue Arctic and Red Aurora, followed by Purple Mirage and Brown Autumn. 

The phone got off to a somewhat shaky start, when its unveiling in March was criticized for jokes about women eating too much cheesecake and being too drunk to operate the phone.

But that bit of bad press obviously did not do much to dampen sales, and now Samsung has a giant hit on its hands.

(Image source: https://www.digitaltrends.com)