Unstoppable Samsung will sell its 10 millionth Galaxy S4 next week

Samsung’s Galaxy S4 may be tasteless and unrefined, but that’s not stopping lots of people from buying it.

After a month on the market, the Galaxy S IV will hit its 10 millionth device sold next week, according to Samsung co-CEO Shin Jong-kyun.

That may not sound like a big deal, but the importance of the announcement is clear once you consider that it took Samsung 50 days to get to that point with the Galaxy S3 and five months to get there with the S2.

All of this underscores one clear and unsurprising point: Samsung still dominates the Android world, even though its phones lack the stylistic finesse of the iPhone or even our recent Android favorite, the HTC One. Tasteless or not, Samsung is pulling in the cash: According to recent estimates from market research firm Strategy Analytics, Samsung captured 95 percent of the $5.3 billion in profit made by Android in the first quarter of this year. If Samsung doesn’t own Android in influence, it definitely owns it in profit.

Strategy Analytics agrees. “We believe Samsung generates more revenue and profit from the Android platform than Google does,” Strategy Analytics’ executive director Neil Mawston said in a statement.

That probably horrifies Google — or at least you’d like to think so. But instead of feeling threatened by Samsung’s devices, Google is embracing them — albeit in its own special Google way. Yesterday, the company unveiled its own Nexus-ified version of the Galaxy S4, which will be sold stripped of Samsung’s TouchWiz interface. Google’s message with the device was pretty clear: “Samsung, we love your hardware, but you can keep the software.”

Turns out there are a lot of other people who really love that hardware, too.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat