One UI 7 stable release delay helped S25 sales - as expected

[Conshop]

Did this delay boost S25 sales?

As confirmed by Samsung, in South Korea alone, the Galaxy S25 series hit 1.3 million sales in just 21 days, beating the S24 series’ 1.21 million over a longer period, making it Samsung’s fastest-selling Galaxy S ever in that market.

Still, not everyone’s happy about this.

Fans argue that Samsung, known for fast updates in recent years, shouldn’t make loyal customers wait so long. But from Samsung’s side, the delay might have been a clever way to get more people excited about the Galaxy S25—and it looks like it paid off.

[TeeA]

Nah I think the delay is a minor argument. People with older devices were going to upgrade anyway, those with recent devices would only get it b/c they could afford too, while most would just wait for the update instead since modern smartphones are just minor upgrades

[Conshop]

Go read the article please: https://www.sammyfans.com/2025/04/06/one-ui-7-delay-samsungs-update-trick-that-made-the-galaxy-s25-a...

Either way, it has worked in Samsung's favor and I think they'll document it for future strategies.

[TeeA]

South Korea always breaks previous sales records, nothing new there.

The only problem with the new 'strategy' is that it rolls back Samsung improvements of timely software updates that they've struggled with for so long. So now S25 users must 'wait' for One UI 8.1 just because they want to sell more S26s? Then it's no longer strategy, it's capitalism.

[Conshop]

If the trend is all time high sales every year then that means that the One UI 7 update was a massive leap for Samsung thus the delay, I doubt that One UI 8 will delay because they are pushing for the fold and flip 7.

But, Samsung did market the One UI 7 as their primary feature in the new S25 and most new Samsung smartphones so there's that to consider.

[TeeA]

One UI 7 was delayed because it is a major overhaul hence the delay, and yes because of minor hardware upgrades it would be advertised more than anything else but we're talking about purposefully delaying software updates to older devices just to sell more newer devices at the expense of improving the software upgrade policy that was improving as of late.

I agree that One UI 8 will ship with the new foldables and that 8.1 will ship with the S26 but should they decide to release 8.1 for older devices in Q2 next year(as an example) just to sell more S26s(or Fold/Flip 7 since they'll get it first)? Nah, I don't think so.

[Conshop]

It was a major release of the software so let's hope that these suspicions aren't confirmed by a late one UI 8 release next year but I think by the time S26 comes out, S25 and S24 will have the update.