Even before the iPhone 15 series was launched, Samsung apparently had a feeling that its rival’s phones were going to do well. And now that that fear is coming true, the company might go forward with its alleged plan to introduce the Galaxy S24 series earlier than last year.

South Korean publication The Elec’s (via Revegnus) new report sheds light on the current state of things at Samsung. The company’s latest foldable handsets – the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Flip 5 – are apparently selling 8 to 10 percent better than their predecessors, which is no mean feat, given the current state of the market.

But Samsung’s bendable phones are not immune to the wider macroeconomic challenges and do not seem to be doing as well as Samsung had hoped. So even though the company’s annual foldable shipments are projected to be 10 percent higher compared to 2022 and may reach 10 million units for the first time in history, industry watchers have observed something that indicates that sales are falling short of expectations.

The three-day Chuseok holiday is around the corner, and if demand for the new Galaxy Z series phones was high, Samsung would have ordered new parts to avoid production disruptions, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. This indicates that shipments will not reach the 12 to 13 million units predicted by industry watchers.

An earlier report had said that Samsung’s partners would kick off mass production of Galaxy S24 parts in November, a month earlier compared to last year. This gave rise to speculations that the company would move up the launch of the Galaxy S24 line.

Today’s report claims that the Galaxy S24 will be released a month earlier than the Galaxy S23, which was released in February. Parts production will begin from next month.

The Elec says that Samsung is going to launch the Galaxy S24 series earlier than last year because the iPhone 15 is seeing strong demand. The South Korean giant doesn’t want Apple to take big bites out of its market share.