Samsung has just announced that its flagship device, the Samsung Galaxy S3, is launching in 28 areas across Europe and the Middle East today. The South Korean giant will increase that number to 145 countries when July comes, the company said via press release. Samsung said that today’s wide scale launch is the company’s largest single device push and that its extension in July will increase the number of carriers offering the phone to 296 worldwide including operators in the U.S. Reuters also reported that major global carriers, from Vodafone to Singapore’s SingTel, have been aggressively promoting the S3, fuelling speculation that the smartphone could top the Galaxy S2’s 20 million unit sales worldwide.
“In the two years that we’ve been offering pre-orders, it’s the most pre-ordered Android device we’ve had in our line-up,” a spokesman for Vodafone UK said. IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo commented on the other hand,”The Galaxy S3 is a real challenger to the upcoming iPhone. This will likely be one of the most sold smartphones this year, though the real test will come when the next iPhone is launched.”The Samsung Galaxy S3 was launched in London earlier this month and it features a 4.8-inch screen with a 1280×720 HD display, an 8 megapixel camera, 32GB of internal storage, Android Ice Cream Sandwich, and a 1.4 GHz Exynos 4 Quad processor. The device is also expected to arrive with new features including S Voice, Smart Stay, Smart Alert, Social Tag and Direct Call.