Samsung Galaxy S3 is now the most pre-ordered gadge

In the history of gadgets, none has picked up such an army of fans before launch. The Samsung Galaxy S3 has already received nine million pre-orders before launch - even with few people getting to play on Android's latest smartphone until it arrives in the UK on May 29. When the phone arrives, it will instantly become the fastest selling gadget in history, beating out the iPhone 4S's four million units sold in three days. It also tops the first iPad's two million tablets in two months, and the Microsoft Kinect system - which allows you to wave at your television via the Xbox 360 games console - which shifted 2.5 million units in 25 days. Samsung has reportedly hired 75,000 workers to keep up with the demand, with the company confident of meeting all pre-orders. The company is said to have the capacity to churn out five million phones per month - or 66 phones per worker per month. In the UK, Carphone Warehouse has confirmed that the S3 is the most popular phone of the year so far, with thousands of customers lined up to pick up their phone a week from today. Spokesman Graham Stapleton said: 'Pre-order demand for the new Galaxy S3 has surpassed expectations since the handset was first unveiled two weeks ago. 'The first 24 hours alone saw thousands placing their pre-order at Carphone Warehouse.' The S3's predecessor - the Galaxy S2 - took about six months to sell 10million phones, and 11 months to sell 20million.The release of the phone is likely to swell the number of Android users - although with the plethora of devices on the operating system, the increase may end up just causing a small spike. There are now in the region of 350million Android users in the world - with an estimated 900,000 to one million people picking up a new Android device each day. The software could be on one billion screens by the end of 2013, according to some estimates. Apple have not released recent figures for iOS usage - both iPhones and iPads - but in early 2011 the total was believed to be about 110million. Microsoft is notoriously quiet on the number of sales of Windows Phone 7, but it is believed to have shipped about 10 million phones since the operating system launched two years ago, giving them just a fraction - 1.3 per cent - of the market. Although, to be fair to Microsoft, they might not even need a phone version of Windows - due to patent and licensing agreements, Microsoft makes between $5 and $15 on most sales of Android phones, compared to the estimated $3 which goes into Google's pockets per handset through advertising revenue each year.