Samsung Electronics has hit the jackpot with its newest flagship phone. According to a new report on Friday, May 18, the recently unveiled Samsung Galaxy S3 has already generated 9 million pre-orders from more than 100 international carriers.

The report comes from Korea Economic Daily, and also cites an unidentified Samsung official claiming that Samsung's smartphone factory in South Korea is running at full capacity, producing 5 million units per month in order to meet the expected demand.

A View from the Top

Samsung has recently dethroned long-time leader Nokia and snatched the crown as the world's No.1 mobile maker in the first quarter of 2012, and is also the unparalleled and undisputed leader of the Android market. Samsung's smartphone sales account for roughly 40 percent of all Android-based smartphone sales worldwide.

Moreover, the great popularity of its Galaxy smartphones also boosted Samsung ahead of Apple as the world's biggest smartphone maker in the first quarter, according to research firm Gartner.

The Samsung Galaxy S3 features a whopping 4.8-inch 720p Super AMOLED display, an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera, and runs on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Samsung's new flagship phone is powered by a quad-core Exynos chip clocked at 1.4GHz, with 1GB of RAM. It comes in three different configurations - 16GB, 32GB and 64GB - expandable with a microSD card supporting up to 64GB of additional storage. Other features include accelerometer, proximity sensor, RGB light, gyroscope, near-field communication (NFC) capabilities, and barometer.

Tough Competition

The new Samsung Galaxy S3 is expected to be a powerful rival to Apple's next-generation iPhone, which is yet to be announced, and to HTC's One X, which for now is indefinitely delayed at Customs from entering the U.S. Samsung's previous Galaxy iterations have proved very popular and successful, with both versions generating impressive sales and boosting Samsung to the top. The third-generation Galaxy phone is expected to be even more successful than its predecessors, and it has plenty of exciting specs and features to support this claim.

The highly-anticipated Samsung Galaxy S3 was recently unveiled in a high-profile event in London, on May 3. The new Galaxy phone will hit Europe on May 29 in Germany, and it will launch in June in the U.S. The device will also reach India in the first week of June.