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SAMSUNG HAS ANNOUNCED plans to slash the number of smartphone models it issues next year by up to one-third as it tries to cut prices in the face of intense Chinese competition.
The strategy, confirmed by a company spokesman Tuesday, was unveiled during a presentation in New York by the South Korean conglomerate’s head of investor relations, Robert Yi.
Yi said the company – which last Thursday reported a near 50% plunge in third-quarter net profit following a 20% drop in the previous quarter – would reduce the number of smartphone models in 2015 by between one-quarter and one-third.
The strategy is expected to be accompanied by a significant increase in the production of remaining models that can be sold more cheaply to compete with cut-price Chinese rivals.
The recent nosedive in Samsung’s fortunes followed several years of stellar growth and a seemingly endless succession of record quarterly profits driven by its all-conquering mobile unit.
Its flagship Galaxy S smartphone has suffered in the high-end market from the popularity of arch-rival Apple’s new iPhone 6, while its dominance of the middle- and low-end handset segment has been challenged by Chinese handset makers such as Huawei, Xiaomi and Lenovo.
For the moment, Samsung is still the comfortable leader by sales volume, but its share of the global smartphone market has fallen from 35% a year ago to just under 25% , according to Strategy Analytics.
Another recent deal will see Samsung make the majority of chips for future iPhones and iPads starting in 2016, which is worth ‘billions’ according to the Korea Times. Apple had switched away from Samsung to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), but Samsung will now make 80% of Apple’s iPhone and iPad chips again.
(Additional reporting from Quinton O’Reilly)
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The re election of a war monger might have been seen to precipitate this …
@Brendan Harlowe: careful now, might get deleted. I shouldn’t even be commenting on this.
No need for an explainer here
Millions of people living under a savage military occupation soon to be in its fifty sixth year, civilians, women and children killed on a nearly daily basis, thousands imprisoned without trial or ‘charged’ with secret evidence, hundreds of thousands of heavily armed fanatical colonists transferred by their government onto stolen lands, a war crime under the Geneva conventions, homes and schools of the indigenous population demolished, different legal systems based on religion. Visitors to the West Bank now have to inform the Occupation forces of any romantic involvement with West Bank residents within three months, Arabs only of course. Israel is an Apartheid state.
@Gavan Duffy: you make it sound like there’s only one side to this conflict. If that were the case it would be the only conflict in history with only one side.
@Aidy McBride: Apartheid is one sided, by definition. And the points of fact that Gavin has made, are plain to see for anyone who cares to look at a map…
https://www.palestineportal.org/learn-teach/israelpalestine-the-basics/maps/maps-loss-of-land/
@Aidy McBride: This is not a conflict, it is an occupation and creeping colonisation of a third world country by a nuclear armed regional superpower, flush with 3.8 billion in annual pay to slay military funding. It is no more a conflict than any of the other one sided colonial wars in history.
@Aidy McBride: rubbish comment Israel
@Aidy McBride: rubbish comment Israel
@Aidy McBride: rubbish comment Israel
@Gavan Duffy: so who is killing the Israeli civilians then? Why took the 17 year old fella off his life support machine?
@Aidy McBride: The deaths of Israeli civilians, and the thousands more Palestinian civilians,lies firmly with their own government and their decades long policy of Apartheid and colonisation. You seem to think the incident you mention is some sort of outlier, unfortunately for the Palestinians it is not, as I have said the Israeli occupation forces are currently withholding the bodies of 350 of their Palestinian victims, and routinely deny their victims access to medical assistance after they have been shot by Israeli occupation forces, they never make it to life support, let alone get taken off it. Apartheid is a crime not a conflict.
@Aidy McBride: educate yourself before posting this silly spam.
TLDR: colonization and oppression
3 of the top 4 articles on TJ not open for comments, curiously including one on assylum seekers.
Without a doubt the best thing about the TJ and the 42 are the comments sections which makes the decision to put the 42 behind a paywall all the more curious.
Not that it makes any difference to me given I havn’t been able to post a comment on the 42 for about 4 years now.
@Stanley Marsh: There is clearly an agenda. Don’t worry, it will all come out in the wash…
Did you manage to keep a straight face author when typing that headline??
Why can’t I comment on the massacre of Israeli civilians?
@Aidy McBride: Go away.
@Aidy McBride: G’wan away.
have your say