Samsung couldn't ship 300 million phones in 2020, but has high ambitions for 2021

2020 proved to be quite challenging for Samsung as the ongoing pandemic has prevented the phone maker from shipping more than 300 million devices; Samsung is about to end the year with around 270 million devices sold. What a fail, some of you might say, and most of Samsung's competitors would surely be stoked to reach such shipment numbers, but in the case of the Korean chae-bol, not hitting 300 million shipments is an extraordinary precedent because Samsung has been consistently hitting that milestone on a year-on-year basis since 2011.

Things could probably be wholly attributed to the corona-crisis which disrupted the normal flow of things and has obviously deterred potential Samsung customers from pulling the trigger on a new smartphone.  Yet, the markets are starting to show signs of recovery, which is why Samsung has once get reportedly set an ambitious 307 million phone shipments for 2021, ETNews reports. Broken down, flagships will be roughly 50 million, and 6 million of those devices will be foldable. The Galaxy A and M series will form the bulk of the sales as 237 million of these will hopefully be shipped in 2021. The last leg is comprised of 20 million feature phones.

The Galaxy S21 series in January 2021 will kickstart the flagship year for Samsung, yet it's still unclear what the future holds for the Note lineup. Rumors are it's getting axed in favor of the company's foldable wares. Entry-level and mid-range devices will also play a rather important part in Samsung's portfolio, with many more devices across the board scoring 5G support.

As we mentioned, Samsung will kick off 2021 rather strongly with an earlier than usual release of its flagship smartphone: the Galaxy S21, S21 Plus, and S21 Ultra will arrive with a new design language in a trove of colors on January 14 and officially hit the shelves on January 29 worldwide. With prices ranging from $849 for the base Galaxy S20 model to $1,299 for the spec'd out Galaxy S21 Ultra, there would be something for everyone in the flagship Galaxy lineup.