Despite the looming economic downturn, the latest foldables by Samsung, the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Fold 5, have set a new record for pre-orders amounting to 1.02 million units in South Korea for both models combined and up from 970,000 units last year.

After only a couple of days, the pre-orders of the new foldable devices are inching closer to another recent February record for Samsung of 1.38 million units set by the latest flagship Galaxy S23 series.

“Preorders for the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Fold 5 went pretty well despite difficult conditions such as the global economic downturn,” a Samsung official said. “Samsung’s foldable smartphone this year got the green light.”

So far and close to Samsung Electronics’ mobile head Roh Tae-moon’s earlier forecast, the tech giant said the vertically folding Galaxy Z Flip 5 phone is leading in pre-orders with 70% of the orders compared to the horizontally folding Galaxy Z Fold 5 model with 30%.

Additionally, Samsung asserted customers tend to prefer the Galaxy Z Flip 5’s new 3.4-inch cover screen, named the Flex Window, which is larger than the previous model.

Beyond the personalisation aspect of the Flip 5, the 12-megapixel camera on the back of the device with the FlexCam feature was anointed as another popular feature.

The latest Flip and Fold were created with the younger generation in mind and in an attempt to capture the market share when considering 65% of iPhone users are aged 18 to 29, much higher than Samsung’s 32%, according to a Gallup Korea poll.

For now, the telecommunications industry predicts shipments of Samsung’s latest foldable smartphones for the year will easily exceed 10 million units.