High turnover or delivery problems? Samsung's flagship tablet sold out in a week.
Do people like Android tablets? This is the bizarre world presented by the latest Samsung news. The company made the Galaxy Tab S8 range available for pre-order last week, and now Samsung says the tablet is so popular that it's stopped accepting pre-orders.
XDA Developers noted that pre-orders for some models had been discontinued and received the following statement from Samsung:
Samsung released three models of the S8 last week: the base model Tab S8, the Tab S8+, and the Tab S8 Ultra. Only the Tab S8+ is still on sale, with the $699 Tab S8 and $1,099 Ultra model listed as "sold out."
The Ultra model made headlines because it's a massive 14.6-inch tablet with a unique slim-bezel design and a MacBook Pro-style display notch for the front-facing camera. The other models have a more traditional tablet design. The Tab S8 lineup features flagship specs with a Snapdragon 8 Gen-1 SoC, 8GB of RAM, high-resolution displays, and aluminum bodies.
There's no obvious reason why the Tab S8 is suddenly popular. Aside from the camera notch, Samsung's Tab S8 lineup doesn't differ much from the Tab S7 lineup that launched in 2020. Samsung decided not to update the Tab S lineup for 2021, suggesting it wasn't a big seller. The company says the shortage was due to increased sales, but it could just be the usual supply chain issues. According to IDC, Samsung is the second largest tablet maker after Apple with a 20 percent market share.
Google is hoping for a renaissance of Android tablets with the release of Android 12L in March and a push for more tablet apps. We haven't seen the impact on the market yet, but many OEMs, including Samsung, are showing a renewed commitment to Android tablets.
