Samsung sees 95% drop in profits for a second consecutive quarter
Samsung sees 95% drop in profits for a second consecutive quarter
Today, Samsung posted its Q2 2023 financial results. The report says Samsung's profits have dropped considerably compared to last year.
Samsung sees 95% drop in profits for a second consecutive quarter::Today, Samsung posted its Q2 2023 financial results. The report says Samsung's profits have dropped considerably compared to last year.
each new phone is more expensive, with less functionality.
hover on the touch screen? gone
iris scanner, gone
headphone jack? gone
air pressure sensor? gone
humidity sensor? gone
ir blaster, gone
meanwhile I get charged out the ass for storage space.
Why the fuck would I want a newer phone?
Don't forget the SD card slot missing, S20 was the last one that had it. I still don't know what to get after that, just because of the missing SD.
mine can take an sd card, but only if i take out one of my sim cards, of course
That pisses me off the most
I got an A52 just for that reason. Still using it. I wanted a S20 but they were sold out and I was told they stopped making it.
Also removable batteries gone
It should be back in 2027 in EU at least
That's supposed to be coming back by EU law in the next few years. So we have that at least.
Don't forget color changing led notification light. You could pay with your phone at old card readers using MST. Oh yeah, and the S9 had a blood pressure sensor.
They want to keep competing with and copying Apple/iphones, yet they keep forgetting about what makes Android phones so appealing to the people who select these phones over iphones.
Wait air pressure sensor and humidity sensor? Are you talking about their watches?
At least Samsung has proper video out through the USB port. Unlike the trash that Pixels depend on, such as Chromecast. What kind of GPU doesn't have either HDMI or displayport (through USB-C like Apple, Samsung, OnePlus, Steamdeck, laptops, etc. ) out in this day and age?
Holding tight on to this Samsung Note 9 until it finally dies. Battery is still 'ok' for now, will last a full day.
Snapdragon, not that pos Exynos
Finger print reader on the back is the only way to do it. Wife has had several newer models with built in front side fingerprint reader and it has been ridiculously unreliable by comparison.
Iris Scan
Face Scan
Headphone jack
Micro-SD Card
USB-C
Wireless charging
NFC with payment support
And even the stupid pen thingy that I use maybe once a month.
Not 5G but the 4G LTE is usually more than fast enough even for streaming when using as a hotspot.
When money is tight you might use your phone for a year or two longer. 1000 Euro phones also don't help the matter.
While I don’t use a Samsung, I am over half way through my phones fifth year. Other than a battery replacement I’ve had literally no problems whatsoever.
If only lifespan and right to repair were written into law everywhere.
It also seems like the whole you gotta upgrade every other month hype has long since died down. It's not the exponential improvements that it was ten or twelve years ago.
I couldn't agree more. I have a Zfold 2 that I've had since launch (3 years) and I look at the phones on offer now that I have an upgrade available and I see no reason to upgrade to a new phone for a marginally better camera and processor, there hasn't been enough innovation in mobile tech in that time to warrant paying another £1000+ over another 3 years, I'll rock this phone phone until it dies the same way I did my Note 9.
Phones just went through the same thing PCs went through twenty five years ago.
I'm still using my iPhone 8 Plus that I bought in 2017 and it still serves well since I don't play games.
Sorry. I'm just trying not to get evicted due to living in a country with the highest rent, internet, food, and data plan prices.
Seeing that you’re from Canada, why is this so? Why is living in Canada so expensive relative to elsewhere?
Government. Not liberals or conservatives, but the government as a whole. Canada has had many years where both liberal and conservatives were in charge, and nothing changed.
Canada doesn't allow competition. We have 3 main internet providers, 3 main phone plan providers, like 2 grocery store chains, a couple airlines, etc.
When other companies attempt to come in to break up monopolies, they lobby, and get them shut down.
I mean where are we going to go? America isn't really an alternative, as much as Americans think it is. Our healthcare, gun laws, etc are things that make Canada really good. We could move to some European or Scandinavian country, but that's not as easy as it sounds, especially when you need to learn a new language, get accepted, move your entire life, and live in such a different culture.
So people in Canada just accept it. Maybe one day monopolies will be broken up, but there are no parties that are going to do that now. Left or right leaning.
The Economist explains it well in their article Australia and Canada are one economy—with one set of flaws. The competition regulators in both Australia and Canada aren’t doing their job, allowing oligopolies to form.
It’s a type of endemic corruption and Transparency International should start calling it out.
At least you don’t live in the city with the highest rent prices. Our countries treated housing like and investment scheme which drives up local tax revenue resulting in reduction year in year of new developments (assuming Canada has the same supply Constraints as here) . The reduction is fueled by the tax revenue however also by the increasing amount of investors and owners who vote. They don’t want their asset values to decrease so it’s artificially kept high the value component of the assets left long ago, we are in fictional valuations now.
Regarding food, their is no other way around monopoly or duopoly other than supporting farmers markets. By supporting them they can grow their base and bring down prices. Not sure what else can be done here. It’s a real problem for us here.
Electricity prices are skyrocketing here and that’s squarely landed at the feet of poor renewables planning. Mandatory coal plant shutdowns without having replacement capacity in place is killing people when the elderly & vulnerable can’t afford AC during the heat waves.
Sounds like Singapore.
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
This is a sign of an upcoming recession if we aren't already in one. People are starting to run out of their savings due to stagflation and are looking for areas to cut. Buying a new phone every year or every other year and replacing laptops every 5 years are among the first things to go in anyone's budget.
So currently the only people refreshing their devices are the people who NEED new devices.
Capitalist economies always need spends out of desire and not just necessity.
Worst part is instead of reversing the gouging these companies will probably just go ham on the planned obsolescence.
Or simply that prices have become insane. Good phones used to be around 400, taking me a few days to think about it and say yes. Now they are beyond 1000, so I will do my best to avoid having to upgrade and go with custom ROMs again. In the meanwhile, we also lost exchangeable batteries, external SD cards, and microphone jack, and we gained more Google spyware and bloat.
Good phones used to be around 400, taking me a few days to think about it and say yes. Now they are beyond 1000
I'm not sure what you mean by a "good" phone. Like yeah, they came up a bit. A Pixel 7a costs $499, and if one wants wireless charging and a better camera they can go with the Pixel 7 for $599. Regular non-Pro iPhones are around the same price.
Like yeah, folding phones are well over $1,000 in most cases, but personally I think that's a gimmick, my hot take. But for me and 99% of the people I know, we're sticking with our slab smartphones.
I bought a m52 a while ago on a black friday promotion or something like that for 280. It's the most expensive phone I ever bought (usially i try to stay under 200). I know that for some that is peanuts, but I have it hard to justify spending so much money on a phone. 1000 for a phone is something I would never be able to do. The thing I do like about it is the quality of the photos and the ease to connect with my wireless buds.
The gouging is insane. £300+ for a tablet keyboard case for the s9 ultra.
I got one free as a preorder for the s8 ultra. No chance I am paying that much for a keyboard.
You hit the nail on the head for me. I loved my Galaxy S9+ but it was over 4 years old and literally falling apart. I just replaced it with an S23....but also as others have said, I think the S9+ was better. I'm especially having issues with the camera (look up bananagate) and my old car doesn't have Bluetooth so I have a USB C to Aux adapter that randomly cuts out sound so for a lot of drives I just put the sound up on my phone speakers and play directly.
I got a cigarette lighter usb port to provide power to a Bluetooth -> aux dongle. Works well.
I remember reading vague claims that this was expected by samsung and it was just the cost of something they did some years ago to eliminate competition. Unfortunately I don't have anything more concrete but someone else might know and add a comment.
It's not just stagflation, it's greedflation
Sadly I don't think greedflation is an official term. Stagflation was the closest I know about anyway.
damn and I just start my studies at the university :(
Tbh, might not be a bad time to do it as long as you don't sink yourself into debt too much or have to take out high interest loans. Because if the crash happens while you're studying and by the time you graduate things might start recovering again. I guess we'll see.
Drops in profits can mean investments, new hires and a myriad of other stuff. No meaning in the headline whatsoever. Profits are not revenue.
Foldable devices seem like the 3d TVs of the last couple of years. I will not be getting one any time soon.
After having one, it's really amazing and the form factor and random utility it brings (built in tripod, easy to aim flash light and be hands free). The screens just need work. The crease is a non-issue as far as using the phone, but the little screen protectors that manufacturers say not to take off will deteriorate after like 6 months.
I think it's close though and I do often miss my foldable.
Have had a samsung foldable and in a 2 year time period I've had to replace the factory installed screen protector twice. It started w a little crack that crept upwards until the whole protector was split in half. Ended up just peeling it off after the 2nd replacement started cracking. I imagine ppl don't like the idea of not being able to protect their screens for one of their premium products....
On the flip side I did watch the superbowl from a hotel pool with this phone and it was perfect for that.
and who even wants this? a couple of friends have them, and it seems like nothing more than a weird novelty. in sci-fi, the phone unfolds to become a tablet, not folds in half to become… uselelss while potentially damaging the screen for no good reason.
this is a classic example of one of those technologies that you think would be cool, but once you have it, you’re like, “eh, never mind.” but Samsung went all sunk cost fallacy and doubled-down on it, losing billions. brilliant!
I'd love to have one but they're overpriced.
Same with every flagship, the tech isn't scaring me off just that the price is ridiculous to me. A new phone case, wallpaper and launcher and I'll get another year out of any phone.
I see why you're saying that but I love my fold and I don't think I could go back to a regular phone anymore, you quickly get used to the screen real estate and its difficult to give it up imo. While the outside screen is too thin on my fold for my fat fingers you get the best of both worlds of a phone and a more portable tablet, I get it if its not your thing but I find it very handy to have that extra work space on my phone.
I'm in the same boat with my foldable. It'd be a handicap now to watch videos on a smaller screen now that I've gotten used to the bigger one. I only use the small screen for phone calls now because it's awkward holding the large screen to your face for that.
While the outside screen is too thin on my fold
Yep, I'm hoping they'll do a slightly wider tri-fold model at some point. I'd like to have a wider front screen, like Galaxy S22 Ultra sized, and then be able to unfold twice to get a ~3x sized tablet-sized screen.
Not that that would help with the already astronomical price-tag of the Z-Fold.
And now TVs fold also 😂
Yeah, so many points of failure and so expensive
Maybe they could stop taking features away from their phones. Put a micro SD and aux jack back and I'd buy one
Maybe I am in the minority but I’ll never need an aux jack again and I see it as another point of failure for water damage.
Maybe I am in the minority but I’ll never need an aux jack again
There is still significant lag for bluetooth audio on both ios and android platforms. It's doesn't really impact calling, and it doesn't really impact watching video content (because they figured out how to measure that latency in real time and inject artificial delay into the video stream so that audio and video sync). But what they haven't figured out yet is the answer for bluetooth audio for gaming. When gaming, you can't arbitrarily delay the video feed so that it lines up with audio, so the bluetooth audio experience is complete dogshit for any gaming scenario. If you game, you have to use the physical cable or the constant audio lag will drive you mad.
Also, there used to be (still are) a fair number of accessories designed to work through the aux port. Examples: mobile credit card readers that connect through aux jack (like square/paypal) that are used heavily by small vendors (especially for shows/events); also things like selfie sticks that use a cable plugged into the aux jack connected to a length of wire running inside the selfie stick to a button on the end of it.
The market is starting to come up with wireless versions of these things, but the modern wireless versions now require unique ios and android versions of them when the aux-jack solution used to be platform independent.
Also, the audio quality of an aux jack is an order of magnitude superior to anything that can be piped through bluetooth....still.
I very much appreciate devices still throwing traditional aux jacks onto mobile devices. Ideally, there will be a wireless technical solution that eventually is superior, but that technology is definitely not bluetooth and we're still waiting for it to be invented and hit consumer availability.
What is this, 1995? /jk
Nah it's 2005
As a Samsung user of 6 years, mainly due to job phone policy, I say they deserve it.
Great screens, but gawddamn they aren't worth their price. No charger, no headphone jack, no expandable storage, fingerprint sensor that are iffy and damn OS taking up 30% of your storage, no matter which option you go for.
I like the camera and s-pen on my S22u but that's it. They need to lower price and make competent mid range phones again, like the A52s.
But you can say this about any phone company these days (besides Sony, they still have it all) or you can blame them for taking the 'apple' direction of taking away everything and charging more.
Funnily enough they still have expandable storage on the A54. It's only their best models where they know they can gouge for more storage.
Its actually kinda ridicoulus that somehow features get removed from the top kodeks first and then it slowly trickles down to cheaper phones. You would think pepole paying literaly a 1000 dollars for a phone would complain first and foremost. But then again some pepole replace their phones every 2 years Just beacuse(its not like you need need new more powerful phones for pretty much any use including gaming, with the only known to me exception being emulators, but that is a very specific niche ).
They have expandable storage on a lot of cheaper phones, as well as Aux ports. I chose my phone, the A23 5g, over the A53 because of the Aux port, and it is still an amazing phone.
They still made around $1/2 BILLION.
I love how every headline about their earnings focuses on the drop from before and not on the actual number they made.
Boo-fucken-hoo the record profits they were making the last few years couldn't be sustained forever. Oh noes!1!!!
Dude a 95% drop in profits YOY is most assuredly newsworthy
And remember, nobody is actually losing money, they just aren't making as much as they'd hoped. You make shitty products and you homogenized with Apple losing anything that made you distinct and close to worthwhile. Fuck Samsung, all my homies hate Samsung.
Yeah, this is the chaebol system at work. The Faustian deal between these megacorps and the citizens of South Korea means that it is impossible for Samsung to fail or to be accountable for their bad business decisions. South Korea is the most developed cyberpunk technofeudalistic society.
without any kids. They're in for huuuge trouble.
They went from one million births in 1960 to just 250k last year.
The birth rate is below 1.
with a birth rate of 1, four grandarents make a single grandchild.
Once we go below 1, most people will never even be grandparents.
The boomers will enter retirement age soon, I'm not really sure how that will work.
They definetely won't be able to do anything against North Korea. They will either be bedridden or care for someone bedridden.
Who could know that refusing to patch critical bugs or, for that matter, to put any effort at all into software while constantly raising product prices would piss off the customers? It’s a mistery!
I can't believe that the whole Android ecosystem -and I mainly blame Google, let Apple outplay it at system updates. It was always going to come to a head as people keep their phones longer and longer.
Yeah, this is not it, their mobile division performed well, it was their chips division.
Sounds like a classic trust thermocline. Sales tend to keep stable and users put up with the shenanigans and prices while execs keep ignoring user's complaints, until suddenly there is the straw that breaks the camel's back and sales drop suddenly.
Lol everyone commenting it's because THEY don't want to buy a new phone. Samsung supplies screens, electronic internals for other companies, and a fuck ton of appliances. They don't only make phones..
Yet the article says Samsung attributes that to the phones market?
Samsung attributes this loss in profit to the decline in smartphone shipments due to “high interest rates and inflation.”
Something else that doesn’t seem to bode well is the fact that Samsung believes the boost that came from the launch of the Galaxy S23 series has faded.
And expects a comeback because it’s launching new models…
The manufacturer highlights the launch of the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Galaxy Z Fold 5. It also believes that the smartphone market will make a return.
This seems to indicate that most variable profit comes from the smartphones market.
Samsung sucks and most corporations in tech have horrible practices. At least the big ones. Profits over people is there motive. Tech should be human friendly
All corporations are going for profit. None of them are thinking about you.
I stopped buying Samsung when they started with the Knox bullshit. I saw it as an anti-consumer move.
Why is Knox anti-consumer? I just saw it as their security partner?
I believe that once you buy a device, you own it and you should be able to do whatever you want with it. You should be able to root or install a custom OS and customize it to your heart's content. Knox coupled with Samsung's locked Snapdragon bootloader prevents Samsung phone owners from doing any of that. And on Exynos phones, when you trip Knox, some features stop working on the stock OS and your warranty is void. Doesnt matter if you relock the bootloader, those things are gone. That was already unacceptable to me. Recently though, they also began disabling the camera on the Z Fold 3 when the bootloader is unlocked, which makes me even madder.
I used to be a huge fan of Samsung and it was the only things I bought. They aren't any better than competing brands and looking back now brand loyalty is just really dumb especially when the companies don't give a flying fornication about you. Buy something that works and in your budget. No more Samsung purchases from me.
I have a $300 Motorola 5g Ace, and it does everything I need it to for over 2 years now.
I know personally that I would never buy a Samsung phone again. The budget models are filled with ad/crapware. The premium models are expensive, gimmick laden and bad value.
Genuine question: what do you recommend instead? Not really excited to support Google via pixel either and didn't love my last iPhone. Is there a good choice anywhere?
Oneplus has gone to shit as far as software is concerned, but the hardware is still good, so if you're OK running a custom ROM, they're good.
I last used the Xperia lineup ages ago, but it was a pretty decent experience, close enough to stock Android and the additions they did add were actually improvements. No idea if that's still the case, but you could look up some reviews.
Ditto for Motorola, which was nearly stock Android back in 2014.
Murena sells refurb and new phones with /e/os preinstalled if you want to go google-free.
I do miss the early days of Android, when you had players like HTC creating completely unique Android experiences (I mean so did Samsung, but their uniqueness was how slow Touchwiz was).
Edit: Also completely forgot the fact that Nokia makes some good phones, including pretty affordable ones and some higher end ones. But personally the one person I knew with one had issues with the USB-C port and had to have theirs repaired by the warranty and then refunded on the second or third round. But that was a much older model, maybe 5 years now, they likely have fixed the issues on their newer ones.
Sony Xperia
Have a look at Gigaset aka the Siemens branch that built all those DECT phones aka not Siemens mobile (which was a complete joke and failure). Not part of Siemens any more, anyway. Never really top of the line but also comparatively inexpensive (not as much as China phones but still), and most importantly: Replaceable battery. Always had them, even before the new EU regulation (which isn't even in force yet). Not really that popular in the mainstream market but definitely among builders etc. who want a rugged phone, they're quite successful in that niche.
Not the OP, but I went with Moto instead. They're slim, with minimal junk (2-3 Moto utility apps that aren't terrible, no Facebook or similar), they work as well as my Samsung phones (if not better), and my first one outlasted the network it was running on (AT&T older G-series network).
I think OnePlus, Motorola or Pixel but really you'd have to check reviews since any phone of including this shit if they wanted. Networks do it too so it is important to buy a SIM free phone if possible as the first precaution.
A refurbished Pixel or older refurbished OnePlus, they have great third party software support so you can just throw Lineage or /e/OS on there and never worry about crappy software and/or bloatware again!
The expensive models also have ad/crapware, don't forget about that fun feature
You shouldn't have to do this if course, but if you want to remove all the shit they put on phones it's very easy and safe to use ADB. XDA usually has a list of the things that are safe to remove and there are tutorials online.
I didn't know about the adware but I know they bundle a lot of duplicate shit in the deluded belief that people want to use Samsung's payment system, or appstore or any of the other parallel universe junk that just stinks up the phone.
I don't even want to buy a new phone. It's been more than four years. What great productive work are most people doing on them anyway?
I'd buy a new phone if they fucking offered a flat oled screen. This rounded edges is complete bullshit.
Yep. I run my phones in to the ground and when it's time to replace it I'll get one of the cheaper models that's been out for a year.
If I'm going to pay£1500 for the latest flag ship phone then I'd expect it to do multiple things that a £300 phone can't do but the only real difference is that the cameras not quite as good.
Im scrolling Reddit and Lemmy productively
You could always get one of those phones with buttons for under 50$
The chairman of Samsung is a convicted criminal, by the way. Pardoned by the totally not corrupt president. Apparently he's such a genius that laws don't apply to him.
Not surprising. I'd expect something similar to happen to anyone at the top of any of the chaebols.
Fuck Samsung, I've had the worst experiences in all of tech with their support system. I had a bad ram module on my s22 and even used the Samsung Support app and had a tech point it out to me. Sent it in and apparently the repair center can't see those notes that the support dev had written. It took 3 tries and countless calls to support, and eventually got in contact with the office of the CEO, and they basically admitted their backend support is so fractured that someone with phone in hand can't see any notes any other tech had written. They then decided to give me a refund, which was for less than the receipt, and after fighting for another MONTH to get them to give me the correct funds, they finally sent it to me. 3 months in total. Fuck Samsung.
The CEO directly handles support?
It's a gimmick I think, it's called The Office of The CEO. It's basically just customer support that actually can do things I guess. You can get to it through the Samsung website. It's truly the only way to get anything done, but you basically have to send a super bitchy email to get them to respond. https://www.samsung.com/us/support/contact/email-the-ceo/
Couldn’t be the pricing! Nah. It’s the need for foldable phones
I got LineageOS official just waiting for when Samsung abandons me
Only if you're on a Chinese Samsung phone.....the bootloaders are locked tight on the US and Exynos models AFAIK.
People probably aren't enthused about buying an overpriced tv, fridge, washer, or phone that all come with bloatware and adware.
I might buy a fridge from them if they could make one that lasted more than 10 seconds after the warranty was up.
I'm also in that zone of being in the market for things that Samsung sells, but to me, the brand association is with having all of these issues that don't seem very worth it to me. I just want something affordable and reliable, things that I don't associate with Samsung.
Poor functional design and atrocious security practices and culture will do that. Nothing to see here.
I suspect that hardly any mass market consumer cared about security, sadly. And what exactly do you mean with "functional design"? It's all slabs of screen with a charging port across the industry these days, or did you mean any features added/missing?
For security it depends on where you live in Australia there have recently been several very big hacks which is resulting in a lot of damage from the high valued sensitive information being stolen. So it now matters and is only getting more important. Samsungs made the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Apple the opposite. Curved edge screens were nothing short of an abortion. Their bloatware invasive annoying and made experience terrible. Even the physical button lack of remapping was frustrating and useless.
Software to hardware Samsung is a train wreak.
Maybe make better products, return to high QA, and deal with customers as customers and not enemies?
Nah, take on another L instead.
A lot of people here clearly don't understand how large of a company Samsung is, and what all they sell.
I bought 1 Samsung phone. Never again.
Same. It's the software. I don't want your shovelware, Samsung.
Exactly, they're amazing and last forever, no need to ever buy two! I've had my Samsung tablet now for 9 years and it's still going strong (though I've replaced the battery twice, but I can't blame Samsung for the realities of battery chemistry haha), it's still the best screen I've used too, bloody fantastic big AMOLED display.
Until this thing breaks down one day I've no need to buy any more Samsung stuff! Though when it does, I can't wait to see what other amazing tablets they've cooked up in the intervening years :-D
95% is huge. They been releasing too many models and their new phones are too expensive for me. they should follow apple and only release one every year
They make far more than just phones..
yes they also make crappy fridges which are 100% disposable because the compressor dies 10 seconds after the warranty is up, filling up out landfills with perfectly good appliances that could have stayed in place in working condition if they just spent 5% more on better compressors for them. But no.
From the article, "Samsung blames the decline in smartphone shipments for its financial troubles."
I have a four year old phone, and unless I do something stupid I don't know why I would change.
Performance is a non issue in 2023
I think this is a much more significant factor than everyone saying they want SD and AUX back. A 2019 phone is still very good from a hardware perspective, especially for the needs of the majority of users. Phones plateaued awhile ago.
Because more and more people are using their phones until they quit. Who needs a folding phone?
Good. Fuck Samsung.
no surprise
yeah bruh, i have zero interest in a foldable phone or whatever the fuck.
I don't mind it when corporations lose money. Fuck 'em.