Samsung has said it should surpass its target of selling 60 million smartphones this year, fuelled by the popularity of its Android-, bada- and Windows Phone- based devices. In an interview with the Yonhap News Agency, JK Shin – president of Samsung’s mobile communications and digital imaging unit – said that the South Korean vendor “will likely sell more than 60 million smartphones this year.” In February, Shin estimated Samsung’s annual mobile handset sales will hit a record high of 300 million this year, including 60 million smartphones. The company – the world’s second-largest handset vendor behind Nokia – sold 280 million devices in 2010, including 25 million smartphones. “For the first time, Samsung’s cell phone sales will top 300 million this year. It is a very meaningful and important event,” he said. “To meet the goal, Samsung should manufacture and sell 1 million phones on a daily average and secure components for 1 million handsets every day, which isn’t an easy task.”

While Samsung has become known for Android–based phones such as the Galaxy S and S2, Shin said the vendor plans to boost its line-up with more models running its own proprietary bada OS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone. Samsung will release more “noteworthy” bada smartphones during the rest of the year, he said, with some of them to be featured during a September trade show in Berlin. He also pledged to focus on low-cost smartphones, promising to launch a smart device costing just US$150 by year-end. Samsung shipped nearly 20 million smartphones in the second quarter, roughly double the figure posted in the previous quarter, according to an estimate by Lee Seung-woo, a Seoul-based Shinyoung Securities analyst.