​Samsung to sell Galaxy S8 baseball team edition

Samsung Electronics has continued its aggressive marketing campaign for its new flagship smartphone, announcing that it will sell a special edition of the Galaxy S8 themed after its namesake baseball team in South Korea.

The Galaxy S8 Samsung Lions Edition will have only 1,000 devices in stock, and will go on sale on Wednesday.

Subscribers of the Samsung Lions team can buy the phones online or at their home stadium in the city of Daegu. Customers will also get two VIP tickets for a Lions' game, a smartphone case with the team's logo on it, and other team merchandise.

Samsung has been marketing its new phones hard, earlier this week launching a special Asiana Airlines edition of the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus in an effort to sell more devices.

Samsung will only sell 2,000 units of the Asiana Airlines special edition, and customers can apply for it between April 7 and April 17 -- the same dates for pre-ordering the regular versions.

Asiana Airlines members with 30,000 frequent flyer points can buy the phones at a reduced price. Korea's second-largest airline will offer more services for customers that will allow them to utilise their frequent flyer miles going forward.

Pre-orders for the new Galaxy S8 phones have since hit a record, with Samsung selling 620,000 units so far in Korea -- and initial stock of the Galaxy S8 Plus 128GB model running out.

The company has opened 3,000 trial zones for the new phones. It is also running trials zones in banks for consumers to try out the new facial-recognition feature.

Samsung announced last week that it expects its second-highest ever profits for the first quarter, despite the market absence of the Galaxy Note 7. The company will record an all-time-high operating profit in Q2 thanks to the Galaxy S8, according to analysts.