The smartphone market is tougher than ever, and even industry leader Samsung appears to be feeling the heat. After enduring declining profits, the South Korean behemoth will reportedly be cutting its workforce by 10 percent.
Samsung will be dropping staff in areas like public relations, finance and human resources, according to the Korea Economic Daily.
Perhaps even more shockingly, the publication added that the electronics giant hopes to cut its working expenses by an ambitious 50 percent in 2016.
Despite being the global smartphone leader with a market share of 21.4 percent, the phone, tablet, laptop and computer maker has suffered seven straight quarters of falling profits. Most recently, in July, Samsung posted a net profit of $5.75 trillion won ($4.9 billion) for 2015’s second quarter — down 8 percent from the same time period last year.
Edison Investment Research chalks up some of the company’s recent money woes to its inaccurate demand prediction for the S6 and S6 Edge models, saying “the S6 Edge is meaningfully more expensive than the S6 and given that previous [curved screen] devices have not sold well, Samsung was rational in its expectation that the regular S6 would outsell the Edge four to one. Unfortunately, this was not the case as demand has been roughly one to one, leaving a shortage of the S6 Edge and inventories of the regular S6.”
Additionally, while Samsung battles Apple for the top spot in the premium market, Chinese brands like Xiaomi and Huawei continue to gain ground in the increasingly important budget range, stealing sales from the company’s low end devices like the Z1 and Galaxy A7.
Samsung did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Source:: cnet.com