Best Buy Offering Samsung Galaxy S III Pre-Orders at Canada Stores

A shop assistant poses with the new Samsung Galaxy S III after it's launch at the Westfield shopping centre in west London(Photo : Reuters)

By Zanub Saeed

With the intensely high demand of the Samsung Galaxy S III in North America, with upwards of 9 million pre-orders already, some stores had to shut down their pre-order sales, except Best Buy, which relaunched its pre-orders on Friday in Canada in store.

While the in-store purchase dates for the Galaxy S III was pushed to June 27, notably for the AT&T and Sprint versions, said a new report in the Android Authority blog, local Canadian carriers like Telus, Bell, Virgin, Rogers, and SaskTel still have sets of the Android smartphone for sell, which is still available for pre-orders at Best Buy's stores.

Like Us on Facebook Follow @franchiseherald

Best Buy, and Future Shops, in Canada initially removed the pre-orders as they wanted to ensure that accurate shipments were being made to their stores, said a report on the Mobile Syrup blog. The Galaxy S III was set to go on sale throughout Canada on June 20 but due to incredibly high demand, well into the millions, the in-store dates were pushed and pre-orders were shut down. When the electronics stores stopped allowing for pre-orders, they simply put a "coming soon" notice on the smartphone's page on their respective websites, noted Mobile Syrup.

Future Shop commented on their reason for closing up pre-sales for the Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone.

"Canadians clearly want their hands on the Samsung Galaxy S III - response to Future Shop's preorders have been tremendous since day one. We recently ended preorders for this device to allow time to organize accurate shipments to our stores," Future Shop said in an email response to Mobile Syrup.

Best Buy is charging an extra $50 to reserve the smartphone, in addition to the purchase price of the Galaxy S III itself, when pre-ordering it this week for a June 27 sale. The pre-orders are valid from June 20-26, said Android Authority, and through Canada's mobile carriers.

Best Buy is selling the Galaxy S III for CA$159.99, for a 16-gigabyte version of the phone with a three-year plan, said Android Authority, and about CA$209.99 for a 32-gigabyte phone under the same three-year term.