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According to Samsung Electronics President Sohn Young, who participated at the TechCrunch Disrupt event in Berlin yesterday, there are over one million Galaxy Fold smartphones out there in the wild — double the initial sales estimate made in October of 500,000 units. Despite costing nearly $2,000 and requiring extreme care during use, a sizable number of people have embraced the 7.3-inch folding screen device, making Samsung quite happy and getting it closer to realizing its foldable goals for 2020.

It would be an understatement to say that the Fold had a bumpy start. After several early reviewers had their test devices fail, customer preorders were abruptly canceled and the launch date was delayed by several months while the phone underwent a major hardware revision. The fiasco even prompted Samsung CEO DJ Koh to say, "It was embarrassing. I pushed it through before it was ready."

Samsung CEO DJ Koh holding the Galaxy Fold smartphone (Image: Samsung)

When the Galaxy Fold relaunched in September, it fared better during use, and it even came with a $149 screen replacement service to assuage people's fear of premature breakdown.

One million sales is like a drop in the bucket when you compare it to the tens of millions of other Galaxy devices that Samsung moves every quarter. But for a smartphone this expensive and novel that underwent so much negative publicity early in its lifecycle, it's still quite a feat.

Samsung's ambition for foldable devices doesn't stop with the Galaxy Fold. There have been persistent rumors of a smaller and cheaper Galaxy Fold being released next year, along with others with a different type of folding mechanism. If media reports about Samsung wanting to sell 6 million foldable devices in 2020 are correct, then the Korean giant is off to a good start.