Samsung Galaxy Note II sales go past 5m mark

It’s big, it’s bold and it’s not selling too badly either. Samsung’s 5.5-inch Galaxy Note II has now gone past the five-million channel sales mark.

The Korean tech giant made the announcement today [translation], meaning that some two-million extra phablets have been sold since 2 November. It should be noted though that Samsung prefers to reveal the number of devices it’s sold to retailers rather than end customers.

The company expects that the Note II will sell 20-million units, almost double that of it predecessor, the Galaxy Note. The phablet that pretty much defined the genre sold 10-million units within nine months of launching.

That’s nowhere near as many as the 30-million Galaxy S IIIs sold in the 157 days after its launch, but the Note proved just how hungry people were for a larger screen.

There can be little doubt therefore that the Note helped, at least some degree, to make the Galaxy S III the best-selling smartphone in the world.

The fact that the Note II borrows so heavily from the S III’s design means that it could return the favour.

Although none of Apple’s devices compete directly with the Note II, it hasn’t stopped the Cupertino-based giant from adding the phablet to its ongoing patent battle with Samsung, citing the fact that the device runs Android JellyBean.