Samsung Galaxy S II scores twice the iPhone 4 pre-orders in Korea

Samsung has just published some numbers reflecting the interest its latest Galaxy S II flagship is enjoying at the start of its sales and things are looking pretty good. The 4.3” Super AMOLED Plus-packing smartphone took over 200,000 pre-orders in the manufacturer’s homeland, beating the achievement of the iPhone 4 nearly twice (the Apple smartphone got about 110,000 pre-orders when in launched in Korea last August).

The dual-core Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II recorded 10,000 pre-orders in the first 29 minutes after it appeared on the Korean telecom websites and doubled that number over the next 64 minutes. As is to be expected the country’s largest carrier, SK Telecom, had the largest chunk of pre-orders – over 160,000.

With that kind of interest we can’t help but wonder if Samsung wasn’t too conservative in its estimates for Galaxy S II sales. The company targets 10 million units for 2011, which should equal the results of the Galaxy S II predecessor, the I9000 Galaxy S, in its debut year. Yet the original Galaxy S was released a month later (in June) and didn’t get nearly the same amount of pre-orders (or overall interest for that matter).

And we’ve got some exciting news for those of you waiting for the Galaxy S II to hit their local stores. According to the popular Korean website Danawa.com the handset retails for 455,000 Korean wons sim-free, which equals €290 or $425.

Of course, the smartphone will be pricier in Europe due to the higher taxes and import fees, but once retailers are done milking the eager early adopters, it should settle to levels lower than those of just about every competitor the Galaxy S might face.