A recent article from the Wall Street Journal shed’s a bit more light on what has become a dire situation for Samsung. According to the Journal, the Galaxy S5 has not only failed to meet the company’s sales expectations, but the devices has missed projections by as much as 40%.¹ According to the report, Samsung has sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 million Galaxy S5 devices. This is a significantly lower total than the 16 million Galaxy S4 devices sold in the same 3-month window after launch.

Though the numbers are bad, there are some bright spots. In the U.S., for example, sales did increase. The biggest problem, then, was China. According to a source cited by the Wall Street Journal, “Galaxy S5 sales were down by about 50% from those of its direct predecessor during the first six months that the device was on sale.”² Samsung drastically overestimated the amount of devices it would need, leading to a huge surplus of devices. The Journal goes on to speculate that the lackluster sales may lead to a shake-up at the very top of Samsung’s leadership.