The Solana-branded smartphone Saga is gaining more attention from users as the number of active devices soars to a new high, surpassing 15,000. The increment has likely had a ripple effect on SOL, the native coin of the Solana ecosystem.
More than 15,000 Solana Saga Phones Activated
According to a metric from a Solana Labs-affiliated webpage, the number of active devices at the time of writing was 15,040. Over the past 24 hours alone, 562 new Saga smartphones have been activated.
🚨 BREAKING: Solana SAGA Genesis count exceeds 15,000, with 540 new @solanamobile activations since yesterday.
The count is still increasing! pic.twitter.com/ikd3BY8HVT
— SolanaFloor | Powered by Step Finance (@SolanaFloor) January 13, 2024
Notably, the Saga smartphone saw the most users within the past month. The massive sale was fueled by an incentive. In December 2023, popular Solana-based memecoin project BONK revealed that owners of the Saga device will be eligible for an airdrop of 30 million BONK tokens (worth more than the value of the Saga device at the time)
Further, as BONK began trading on several exchanges like Coinbase, its value skyrocketed, attracting more users to the Saga device. Shortly after, Saga was sold out in the United States.
Solana’s Mobile Device Previously Hauled as “Failure of 2023”
The Saga smartphone was initially launched in mid-2022. The Android device was designed to onboard smartphone users to Web3 experiences and offer a seamless connection to Solana-based decentralized applications (dApps), among other features. The phone’s price tag was around $1,000.
However, the phone failed to generate as much sales as expected by its creators. As of December 5th 2023, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko admitted in an interview that the smartphone had sold 2,500 units, a small number compared with the anticipated 25,000 to 50,000 units sales.
Despite the marketing efforts introduced to boost Solana’s mobile device purchases, popular YouTuber Marques Brownlee hauled the smartphone as the “failure of 2023.” He also discouraged users from purchasing the phone, tagging it as a “terrible idea.”
However, the Saga device appears to have turned things around with the recent purchases driving it closer to the anticipated sales figures. At the same time, the Solana-branded smartphone has contributed to a price increase of SOL, with the cryptocurrency recently reclaiming its place in the top-five crypto assets by market capitalization.
SOL has a market cap of $41.8 billion at the time of writing, more than $10 billion more than its closest rival, XRP.
