April 25, 2024

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[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Electronics' mobile chief Koh Dong-jin said on March 30 that the company plans to more than double the initial production volume of the latest Galaxy S8 compared to its predecessor.

“We will double the production in order to prevent a supply bottleneck we experienced last year with the S7,” he told reporters in New York.

Koh Dong-jin

Last year, Samsung shipped about 10-12 million units of the S7 in the first weeks of the launch. Considering this, the initial shipment for the S8 is expected to exceed 20 million units.

The new phone will hit the market on April 21, with Samsung taking preorders from April 7.

Samsung struggled with short supplies of the S7 and the ill-fated Note 7 last year due to the low yields of some key components, including curved displays, amid the soaring preorders.

Despite the supply issue, S7 became the best-selling model among the S series phones, marking record sales of 49 million units.

The new S8 is fitted with a large wraparound display screen with an 18.5:9 aspect ratio, an artificial intelligence assistant called Bixby, an iris scanner and a facial recognition solution, among other things.

The larger-than-ever display, named Infinity, covers 83 percent of the front screen, as compared to 72 percent of the S7.

The Bixby will offer limited services for now, with a drastic software upgrade being planned in the coming months, according to industry sources. Samsung plans to support other languages such as Spanish, Chinese and German apart from the current Korean and English.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)