It's certainly a good indicator of smartphone demand, although I'm not sure it's comparable with iPhone 4S pre-orders. I suspect that a lot of the S3 pre-orders are direct from carriers, rather than individuals, so it's more of a 'product shipped' rather than 'product sold' statistic.

I could of course be totally wrong, although as it's a leaked stat it's hard to know exactly how a 'pre-order' is being defined...but in my office (of about 180 people, all mobile facing) far fewer people have pre-ordered the S3 versus the iPhone 4S.

I guess Samsung phones are more popular outside US. Among my colleagues, of 10 smartphones, 8 are Samsung ones (includes 3 Samsung Notes) and only one iPhone4S.

Our split is fairly even (I lead a mobile dev team in London, both Android & iOS). Maybe it's a demographic thing: most developers have a Galaxy Nexus, and they don't really see any compelling reason to move on to the S3 right now.

Samsung sell more smartphones than Apple. http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipad-iphone/news/?newsid=3358104

I have the Samsung Nexus S and it's the best phone I've ever owned. (I had an iPhone before this one)