Update: Galaxy S8 pre-orders now at 728,000, higher than Galaxy S7

Update, April 13: The Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus pre-orders continue their steady march. On Thursday, Samsung Mobile CEO DJ Koh revealed that 728,000 customers in South Korea have already pre-ordered the latest flagships and the company expects to hit 1 million pre-orders before sales open on April 21.

Things are looking pretty rosy in the United States as well. “Although we are not able to disclose the exact figure, preorders of the Galaxy S8 are higher than those of its predecessor Galaxy S7 in the US,” said Koh. Earlier this week, Samsung’s US branch boasted that the two S8 versions are hot, with Americans being particularly interested in the larger S8 Plus.

Samsung did not spend much more on marketing compared to the S7, Koh said, though the fallout from the Note 7 recall meant that Samsung had work cut out for it.

Original post, April 10: Last week, the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus went up for pre-order in South Korea. The smartphones are off to a good start, as the initial demand has exceeded expectations. The flagship devices received 550,000 pre-orders in just the first two days.

This means that they are a lot more popular among consumers than Samsung’s previous high-end smartphones. The Galaxy S7 series, for example, received just 100,000 pre-orders in the same time period last year. The Galaxy Note 7 did better with 200,000 pre-orders.

Because of the high demand, some analysts have revised their annual sales estimates for the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. Yoo Jong-woo, who is an analyst at Korea Investment & Securities, also mentioned that the high sales numbers will help Samsung Electro-Mechanics and Samsung SDI, both of which posted an operating loss in the last quarter of 2016, make a turnaround this year.

At least for now, it looks like Samsung was right when it said that the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus will outsell their predecessors. To keep up with the demand, the company decided to double the initial supply of the two devices when compared with the previous Galaxy S generation.

However, we still need to wait and see the pre-order numbers in other countries, mainly the US, before we make any conclusions. The two devices do bring a bunch of new things to the table but are more expensive than the S7 and S7 Edge, which might affect sales. LG G6 also poses a serious threat to the smartphones, as it also offers a large screen with minimal bezels surrounding it and high-end specs. Additionally, it comes equipped with a dual-camera setup, which you won’t find on the S8 or S8 Plus.