[DigitalToday reporter Dae-geon Seok (석대건)] Preorders for the Galaxy S26 series were strong despite forecasts of a slump in the smartphone market. Samsung Electronics said on Thursday that domestic preorders for the Galaxy S26 series totalled 1.35 million units over seven days from Feb. 27 to March 5. The 1.35 million units set a new record as the highest preorder total in Galaxy S series history.

The previous record was set by the Galaxy S25 series, which posted 1.3 million units over 11 days last year. The Galaxy S26 series broke that record after 1 year. For Samsung smartphones overall, the Galaxy Note10 set the highest preorder record in 2019 with 1.38 million units over 11 days.

It held up as smartphone shipments are expected to fall to their lowest level in 13 years this year. Counterpoint Research forecast that global smartphone shipments will fall 12.4 percent from a year earlier this year to below 1.1 billion units. The decline would be the largest in smartphone history. Shipments have been falling to their lowest level since 2013, when the shift to 4G was accelerating.

In the preorder period, the Galaxy S26 Ultra accounted for about 70 percent, showing a clear preference for the Ultra model. The Galaxy S26 Ultra also posted the highest sales among Ultra models, setting a parallel record. The first privacy display on a mobile phone and a 200-megapixel wide-angle camera, offering an experience at the level of professional cameras, drove demand.

By colour, white and black accounted for a large share for the Galaxy S26 Ultra and the Galaxy S26. The Galaxy S26+ was popular in black and cobalt violet. Samsung.com-exclusive colours had higher shares in the order of pink gold and silver shadow.

More than 30 percent of customers who preordered the Galaxy S26 series on Samsung.com signed up for the New Galaxy AI Subscription Club. The company said the double storage benefit, which upgrades buyers of the 256GB model to 512GB, combined with a subscription-club benefit that guarantees 50 percent of the baseline price of the 512GB model if the device is returned after 1 year, was analysed to have drawn a positive response from consumers.

The New Galaxy AI Subscription Club has added coverage for cyber financial crimes and compensation for damage from fraud in direct online transactions and shopping malls to Samsung Care Plus coverage items starting this year. It also introduced a 3-year plan that adds loss coverage to existing coverage for smartphone damage. Galaxy S26 series preorder customers can receive and activate devices from Thursday, and the series will be rolled out sequentially starting on March 11 in about 120 countries worldwide, beginning with South Korea, the United States, Britain and India.