Samsung gets Rs 1,400-cr Galaxy S23 orders on Day 1 of pre-booking

Electronics major Samsung has received orders for around 1.4 lakh units of its premium smartphone Galaxy S23 worth a total of Rs 1,400 crore on the first day of its pre-booking for the device, a senior company official has claimed.

Samsung India, Senior Vice President for Mobile Business, Raju Pullan told PTI that the pre-booking for Samsung Galaxy S23 is almost twofold compared to the previous version of the smartphone Galaxy S22.

"We have clocked almost 1.4 lakh units as pre-book in the first 24 hours and this is almost two times of Galaxy S22.

"With an average price of about a lakh of rupees, the turnover on a free book is almost Rs 1,400 crore within 24 hours," he said.

Samsung will continue pre-booking Galaxy S23 smartphones till February 23.

The launch price of Galaxy S23 series in India is in the range of Rs 75,000 to Rs 1.55 lakh per piece.

The company has announced that Galaxy S23 will be manufactured at its Noida plant.

The older Galaxy S Series smartphones were manufactured at Samsung's Vietnam factory and the company imported them for sale in India.

Samsung's moved to make Galaxy S23 in India after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the removal of duty on the import of camera lenses, which is one of the key unique selling propositions of Galaxy S series smartphones.

The phone will come with a set of five cameras with sensors in the range of 12 megapixels to 200 megapixels.

Samsung has priced the Galaxy S23 series 2.7-30 per cent higher compared to Galaxy S22 Ultra smartphones.

Pullan said that the consumers have responded well to the propositions of S23 be it camera sensors in the phone, high power Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform made available exclusively for Samsung and sustainability factors of using recycled plastic and other components in the device.

Samsung has slashed the price of Galaxy Watch 4 LTE and Galaxy Buds 2 by about 90 per cent from Rs 48,000 to Rs 4,999 for customers pre-booking high-end Galaxy S23 Ultra.

Pullan said that Samsung has brought in "custom affordability" by bundling Galaxy Watch 4 LTE and Galaxy Bus for Rs 4,999 as well as providing purchases in 24 instalments without any interest and also through Samsung Finance plus in 15 instalments.

"Bharat segment is growing in the premium segment faster than the Metro markets that are there," Pullan said.

Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore (SRI-B), which is the company's largest software R&D centre outside South Korea, has contributed to the development of the Galaxy S23 series by closely collaborating with Korea teams and other Overseas R&D centres like Samsung Research America (SRA), the company said in a statement.

SRI-B engineers contributed significantly to the development of key features in the camera, multi-device experience (SmartThings), on-device AI, and services in Galaxy S23, it said.