Samsung lost in maths, time and space

A SIMPLE QUESTION seems to have sent Samsung spinning and scurrying for a single Korean spokesperson or a calculator.

Some confusion, not helped by the firm, has us wondering whether it has sold six million of its new Galaxy S II smartphones, or whether it has sold three million, both of which interpretations are based on its own announcements.

Way back in May we wrote a story about pre-orders for the Galaxy S II smartphone. It was quite simple in that Samsung announced pre-orders of 3 million units worldwide via its Flickr page. Look, there is even a nice photo.

Time passes and this week Samsung announced that it has sold 3 million units of the Galaxy S II. Initially we were impressed, but then someone said, "Hang on a minute, this doesn't add up."

We put a call into Samsung on Monday and asked it our question, which is, has Samsung actually sold six million handsets, or has it sold all of its pre-orders and then sat back saying, "see how well we did!"

Is it a controversial question? We've asked worse, for sure, and it might be that we are at fault. Either way, you would think that after five days even the most tantric of requests would have come to fruition.

We've called back fairly regularly and have got faintly altered responses each time, but the result is the same, even though the firm was happy to have a UK spokesperson welcome in the latest news, no-one is able to follow up on the claims.

"The Galaxy S II is our most advanced smartphone to date and has been a huge hit with customers," said Simon Stanford, managing director, mobile, Samsung UK and Ireland, before he apparently fell into a comment vacuum.

"This latest sales milestone reflects how devices from our Galaxy range continue to exceed expectations, thanks to a combination of superb hardware, the latest OS and the greatest and most relevant content."

We were told by Samsung's PR company today, and on Wednesday, that it thinks it knows the answer to the issue but is still waiting for confirmation from headquarters so it doesn't want to tell us just yet.

After five days, we thought it reasonable that we would have an answer by now but the PR company is blaming the time difference between the UK and Korea. We didn't realise the time difference was as large as 120 hours.

So how many Galaxy S II handsets Samsung has actually sold remains a mystery to us, and quite possibly to Samsung itself. µ