Samsung may have an early hit on its hands if production estimates about the new Galaxy Ring are accurate. A report claims Samsung has more than doubled its initial production run of the smart ring, taking it to a million units. This gives us insight into the early interest in Samsung’s first smart ring, and also in the general attitude toward the relatively new type of wearable.
According to The Elec, Samsung intended to produce 400,000 Galaxy Rings at first and then examine performance and demand before deciding whether to increase this number. An unidentified source told the publication that Samsung has now increased this by an extra 600,000 rings, which indicates Samsung has seen far higher demand than initially expected for its very first smart ring.
In an earlier report from The Elec, it was stated that Samsung was able to take this approach to manufacturing the Galaxy Ring due to the product’s small size, and an abundance of the key parts used in production. The initial 400,000 quantity was viewed as being a sizable commitment, making the increase in production even more notable.
If Samsung can get all 1 million Galaxy Rings on to the fingers of eager buyers in 2024, then it will have already come close to matching the total sales of the Oura Ring since the very first version. In a recent interview with CNBC, Oura said it has sold “more than a million” smart rings since launch, a date which may go back as far as 2015 when its first smart ring arrived on Kickstarter. However, Oura repeated the same approximate sales figure in 2022, so the exact number is unknown.
The Galaxy Ring has already impressed us, and although it has a high initial cost, Samsung has not added a subscription fee to access data in the app. It’s a big advantage over the Oura Ring, and is likely to play a major part in adoption. Samsung’s big smart ring bet, and the lack of a subscription tied to it, certainly seems to be paying off in these early stages.
