Galaxy S22, partial failure for Samsung. Sales targets for 2022 missed

According to statistics not yet confirmed by Samsung, the Galaxy S22 missed the South Korean company’s planned sales targets earlier this year by a considerable margin.

After first learning that Galaxy A series sales weren’t doing so well for Samsung, it was somewhat predictable to learn that sales of the premium Galaxy S range also fell under the effects of the global economic slowdown. According to rumours picked up by the South Korean press, Samsung’s next investor newsletter will include the missed sales forecast for the Galaxy S22 earlier this year. Exact figures are not known, but we do know that we’re looking at an initial target of 30 million units shipped by the end of 2022. For comparison, in 2021 Galaxy S21 sales were around 25 million units.

As for the reasons for this failure, apparently the slowdown in the global economy and the collapse of post-pandemic shopping appetite are only part of the explanation. In reality, Samsung bears at least part of the blame for this failure, as the controversy surrounding the GOS (Game Optimization Service) has driven away that category of buyers interested in the gaming performance of the S22 series.

Specific to Samsung phones, the Game Optimizing Service (GOS) is a feature responsible for intelligently limiting the processing power (CPU or GPU) that applications can use, whether they are games or common social media or other applications. This means lower battery consumption and users won’t notice, at least in theory, the performance differences. Controversy has arisen from the fact that in performance testing apps such as 3DMark or Geekbench, these services do not change the performance profile, leading to the exclusion of the Galaxy S10, S20, S21 and S22 series from the rankings published online, as the performance reported by the app is not what the phones deliver in the rest of the apps. In other words, Samsung has been accused of cheating in benchmarks, and some of the remaining undecided buyers have turned to other manufacturer’s devices.

Apparently, sales of the Galaxy Z Flip 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 3 didn’t hit Samsung’s projected targets either, with exact figures to be released in the near future.