Technology
Samsung Slips Back in Battle of Smartphones
In this March 27, 2014 file photo, an employee shows Samsung’s Galaxy S5 smartphone at a mobile phone shop in Seoul, South Korea. Samsungs new Galaxy S5 smartphone is more durable than last years model and other leading Android phones, but the iPhone 5s outperformed all of them in part because of its smaller size, a new study finds. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)
(Irish Times) – It seems like only last week that Samsung was seen as the indomitable giant of the consumer technology space, the company that basically owned all the profits in the Android business and, above all, the firm that took on Apple in the smartphone game and ate the iPhone’s proverbial lunch. As the flagship Galaxy S series of smartphones became ubiquitous, there was no shortage of breathless coverage showering the Korean behemoth with plaudits, confidently declaring that it had stolen Apple’s innovation crown.
And then, as suddenly as an elaborate house of cards comes tumbling down, Samsung’s golden era appears to be over.
Its last quarterly results, released at the end of July, showed an alarming slump in revenues, despite the launch of the higher- margin Galaxy S5 – a 25 per cent drop in operating profit from the year-ago quarter, down to $7.02 billion. It warned that the second half of 2014 would be “a challenge”.
“Samsung expects to see its sales of mobile devices increase with the rollout of flagship products and new models, but profitability may suffer due to a heated race over price and product specifications,” the company said.
