Samsung executive: 9 million pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy S III

Back in April of last year, none other than J.K. Shin, Samsung's top executive in its mobile division, said that the Samsung Galaxy S II would sell 10 million units for 2011. If you think that is quite a total, consider that the phone's sequel, the Samsung Galaxy S III, has already amassed 9 million units pre-orderedaccording to an unnamed Samsung official who passed on the number to the Korea Economic Daily. As it turned out, Shin's estimate was on the light side because as of last February, 20 million units of the phone that many call the best Android model ever, were sold. Still, the 9 million units pre-ordered in less than a month compared with the 10 months it took the Samsung Galaxy S II to reach 20 million indicates that the Korean manufacturer has another huge winner on its hands.

9 million units of the Samsung Galaxy S III have been pre-ordered

What makes the number of Samsung Galaxy S III units pre-ordered so impressive is that the total does not include the U.S. market where the phone is not expected to launch until next month. Once you add in the States, the sequel is going to be putting up some very impressive numbers. The anonymous Samsung official said that the pre-orders for the Galaxy S IIIcame from 290 mobile operators from 145 countries throughout the world. The pre-order total compares with 1 million units pre-ordered for the Samsung Galaxy S when it was launched in 2010, and 3 million units pre-ordered for the Samsung Galaxy S II last year.

The Samsung Galaxy S III is set to rollout globally at the end of this month with the aforementioned U.S. launch set for sometime in June. The U.S. is one of three markets that will get an LTE compatible version of the phone with the other two locations, Japan and Korea, getting their units sometime this summer. While the international version of the phone is powered by a quad-core 1.4GHz exynos processor, the U.S. bound models will most likely feature a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor. The Verizon variant of the phone was apparently tested on the Nenamark Benchmark website and had the S4 under the hood.