Samsung can’t shut up about moving 50M Galaxy S phones

Apple and Samsung may be selling the most smartphones, but it’s Samsung that has the most fun talking about it.

Samsung is updating its global sales numbers with some new milestones: The company says that its sold 24 million Galaxy S phones and 28 million Galaxy S IIs, bringing the total sales for the line to over 50 million units.

That’s bigger news for the Galaxy S II, which has sold better than the original Galaxy S in half the time.

The Galaxy Note story is also, er, notable. Like many people, I scoffed and wrote off the oddly-sized phone-tablet hybrid. But people have still been buying the thing — a lot of people in fact: Samsung says that it’s sold 7 million of the devices since its release last October. So maybe there’s a demand for absurdly large phones after all. (We couldn’t get over how dorky the Galaxy Note was in our review, despite being impressed overall.)

As with all announcements of this kind, its worth keeping in mind that for Samsung’s purposes, “sold” actually means “shipped to retail channels.” So when Samsung throws any number out, the consumer-level reality is probably slightly more subdued.

Technicalities aside, all of Samsung’s success comes as the Android smartphone market has become increasingly cutthroat and painfully homogenous. LG, HTC, Motorola have all attempted to carve out their own positions in the market, but it’s Samsung that’s coming out on top. There’s a reason why Samsung likes making these sorts of swaggering announcements: It has a lot to brag about, and modesty’s no fun.

The question now is whether Samsung can replicate this success with the third Galaxy S iteration, which will hit the U.S. in the next few weeks. Something tells me Samsungwon’t have a problem — and we’ll certainly hear a lot about it.

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