Samsung aims to sell 500 million phones this year

Samsung wants to sell no less than 500 million phones this year, according to “industry supply chain sources” who spoke to DigiTimes. We’re talking both smartphones and featurephones combined here, by the way.
In 2012, Samsung shipped 406 million devices according to IDC, 384 million units according to Gartner, and 396 million if you go by Strategy Analytics’ data. In this context, the 500 million figure would represent a sales jump of 23% compared to IDC’s number, 30% compared to Gartner’s, and 26% compared to the one put out by Strategy Analytics.

Unfortunately the ”industry supply chain sources” didn’t bother to break things down further into smartphones and non-smartphones, but we do expect most of that growth to be in the former.
Compared to 2011, Samsung’s 2012 sales represented a jump in shipments of 21% to 23%, depending on which analyst house’s numbers you go by. So Samsung more or less wants to keep the same growth pace this year as well. Whether or not it will succeed remains to be seen, of course. But if it keeps flooding the market with decent devices at decent price points, things should be pretty easy for the Korean company.