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.
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.
Software updates are the problem unfortunately
I wonder why this is not a problem for pcs though
Because PCs are from a time before tech monopolies. They are based on a spec that allows different vendors to work together. As a result there is more competition, more options for repair, etc.
I wonder how long this will last. We’re already seeing Apple getting some crazy performance with their M chips with integrated RAM and GPU, wouldn’t surprise me if PCs start becoming less and less modular as time goes on.
As a guy who likes repairing tech this movement towards anti repair saddens me.
Yes, though technically they started out as reverse engineered clones. There were tons of incompatible microcomputer brands before the IBM PC. Then companies like Compaq put out “PC compatible” clones based on specs that came from reverse engineering of the IBM PC. Over time, things evolved toward deliberate standardization.
Imagine the dumpster fire of legal action, which courts would likely side with, if someone put out hardware that was 1:1 compatible with the iPhone and iOS would run on it. That’s basically what happened, though MS DOS was produced by an additional party instead of IBM.
I have quite a number of systems capable of running Windows 11. Microsoft won’t allow it. Thankfully I run mostly Linux. But your point is not as solid as you think it is unfortunately…
Because PCs are based on a hardware standard that allows for a standard kernel and pluggable drivers. So you can just take a standard install of a new version of Windows, and toss in the same drivers from the last version, and you’re on your way.
On ARM, there is no such standard that is widely deployed, the hardware is integrated bespoke for each and every device, so building a new version of the OS for a specific phone means using very specific configurations (where in memory is the GPU mapped? where is the sound chip mapped? on a PC the hardware can plug-and-play detect this stuff, on ARM it has to be hardcoded into the OS for every device). This is made worse by the chips used in mobile phones being proprietary hardware where the drivers are only released to manufacturers under NDA, and these hardware manufacturers often don’t bother to supply updates at all and individual phone manufacturers don’t have enough clout to force them to
It kinda is. Windows 11 won’t run on older hardware and end of life of the latest version of Win 10 is coming up in 2 years or so. And a bunch of PCs weren’t really ready for Win 10 when that replaced Win 7/8 and again, support for those dropped at some point.
Lifetimes are usually more lenient with PCs, but it still happens. You can switch to Linux of course, but then there are alternatives for many smartphones as well.
My Galaxy S10 is on its 5th year I think. Really had no issues with it, even the battery. Only showing signs of slowdown this year.
Granted, I run my phone on 720p and constant battery saver lol
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.
I’m in the same boat. I’ve still got an S10 from launch, although it’s noticeably wearing down in performance now. I’ll wait to the holiday season to see if I can get a deal on a new Samsung. At that point I’ll have used the s10 for almost 5 years. Used to get a new phone every other year but that’s not needed or wanted now.
Hell, I’ve had a £100 phone for 3 years already and it’s absolutely fine. I’ve noticed a little battery degregation but it still lasts a whole day. Plus a cheap batter change will make it last year’s more. I can’t understand why anyone would still sing those contracts for a new phone every 2 years.
Phones just went through the same thing PCs went through twenty five years ago.
Yeah, I’ve had my LG G8 for four years now and I’m just starting to look for replacements. Unfortunately the G8 is known for the battery being very hard to replace or I would be looking into a battery replacement service instead to get a couple more years of useful life.
I’m clinging to my LG though with no OS updates ever again its days are numbered. In the meantime I paid a shop to replace the battery in my LG because it couldn’t hold a charge anymore.
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 are still $400. They just have this ridiculous tier now that is even higher
I had a Pixel 3a for years. It was a great phone and it was $350. Eventually it stopped getting updates :(
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.
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.
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.
Even my iPad keyboard (the folio from Apple) “only” cost like £180. Samsung’s going nuts.
But don’t Samsung at least throw in the spen?
Samsung isn’t on planet earth with their prices. I was avoiding them anyway because I believe TouchWiz is an inferior interface than stock Android. Just way too much bloat.
Bloat is negligible. In fact it is their software that keeps me stuck with samsung. Its a total superior hardware and software experience.
Just wished they hadn’t gone down the Apple courage route and bumped the price and pimped the features.
You’re the only one I’ve heard of who was happy with it. One of the guys I worked with, traded a new at the time Galaxy S-series phone back into his carrier to exchange for an iPhone because it was very laggy. After seeing one in action I didn’t blame him. It was laggier than my cheap Moto G series, which had a lot less processing power and slower storage. And this was back in 2017, so not too awfully long ago. But maybe things have changed since then.
2017 was a long time ago.
Like with everything you need to invest time to learn the features. If you just want a phone with basic capabilities then you are better off getting other brands.
The spen itself is packed with so many features but rarely does anyone bother learning them. Samsung have developed a powerhouse for productivity and unfortunately that means I’m stuck with them because nothing else compares.
Everyone is on their own journey and I agree that it is not for everyone.
Part of my job still is to help people connect their work email to their personal smartphones, if they want to. Many buy Samsungs because their carrier’s store still sells them up front compared to other brands of Android. Though it’s mostly A-series phones.
The problem with it is that Samsung doesn’t put the access to the features in convenient or intuitive locations so many users just get used to not using them anyway. The only feature, I as a Pixel user envy over Samsung is the right side menu thing. But anyone with iPhone experience or experience using an Android that has gesture nav enabled by default, wouldn’t think to try it even with the spen because that is the gesture to go back.
Ofc Pixels can do multitask yet many don’t realize that because you have to click the app icons at the top of the recent apps screen to access the menu for it. So I guess I don’t have room to talk about that aspect as a Pixel user.
But Bixby? I honestly think it’s a waste of resources for Samsung when they could have just used Google Assistant like other brands. I mean Bixby is okay but still lacks in some areas, but Samsung invested a lot of resources and effort into it just to come up with something that barely keeps up with Google’s Assistant.
Also I’m not a huge fan of their app drawer still. I guess I’m more of a “I just want to see an alphabetical list of all apps” on the app drawer type of person.
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 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.
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.
Young people in Korea have switched over to iphones. iphone have like 60% marketshare now for that demographic
Do you have any sources for this? Afaik Samsung phones are still massively popular with young people in Korea.
Imagine actually using an iPhone
Foldable devices seem like the 3d TVs of the last couple of years. I will not be getting one any time soon.
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.
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from what my friends have told me, that novelty wears off real quick, and is replaced with the concern it will break or wear out— which happens more frequently than manufacturers claim. if not the screen itself, then the hinges, which were a common problem with the old flip-phones, too, back in the day.
I mean, you like what you like. I’m just speaking from a practical standpoint in that any moving parts = a high manufacturing cost and higher rate of defect and breakage. the primary advantage of the “candy bar” form factor is that it reduces/eliminates moving parts and potential points of failure from the physical design.
I admit… I really do miss the idea, even the feel of flipping a phone shut. hell, I even miss slamming a phone down to end a call. angrily jamming my finger into a screen to end a call is REALLY unsatisfying, and often ends in my throwing my phone across the room, and I’ve thankfully developed the habit of throwing it at my couch to save on replacing expensive smartphones, lol. but, until tech evolves tot he point where we get phablets a la Westworld or Legion that can unfold into a super-slim tablet rather than fold down into a flip-phone from the past whose screen could actually just break at any moment because the tech was rushed…. yeah, I’m not interested.
I had a Motorola razr in 2021 that was a good phone, the crease never really bothered me but after 6 months of use the touch screen stopped working and then the pixels started going out on it before it stopped working entirely.
I loved the form factor but it’s just not reliable enough. I’d probably only buy another clamshell foldable if apple made it because I trust them not to rush a half baked product to market.
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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
Sooo… you want a Sony Xperia then
Stupid money, loved the Z series but the price skyrocketed
Yeh it’s expensive but I vote with my wallet. Sony’s build is the best I’ve ever had. Software is close to stock AOSP with nice Sony improvements. Only issue I see is Sony are slow to roll out major OS updates. All in all, I’d argue it’s one of the best devices I’ve had over the last few generations.
This is exactly why I have mine! Sent this from an Xperia 5 III :)
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.
Almost all of those are pretty niche problems though. Which explains why they just aren’t a high priority for manufacturers.
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What is this, 1995? /jk
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To be fair, apples done those things and we said the same thing about those moves. And now look at em.
Samsung doesn’t have Apple’s ecosystem.
Yep, exactly the reason Apple created it, and why I’ll never buy an Apple product.
Same reason I switched to Android ten years ago. Sometimes I want to install an unsigned project.
I’m a tinkerer. Give me that Android freedom any day.
apples done those things and we said the same thing about those moves. And now look at em.
True, however a lot of people really don’t care about that stuff which somehow often gets overlooked here and on reddit.
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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
Maybe if it was revenue. Such a drop in profits could be from many ordinary business operations like expansion
It states in the article that it is from less than expected sales, no?
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.
I love the spen, and never had trouble with the finger print scanner… But you nail the rest of the list.
Fingerprint issues were my biggest complaint on Note 20, coming from S9, that was a huge let down.
Huh, I guess I just got lucky, or have “typical” finger prints!
Try that with a screen protector on 20 series and you’ll see what I mean. With other brands using optical sensor, you don’t need to worry about it at all.
I have a screen protector on my s22u, without a problem.
As I said, maybe I’m just lucky. /Shrug.
Which kind? One that fully adhere to screen or the kind with glue on edges and circular area near sensor?
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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.
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.
From the introduction of the article above: „Samsung blames the decline in smartphone shipments for its financial troubles. Samsung is hoping the launch of its foldables will help level out these losses for the second half of the year.“
Ah shit, I read the Q1 report: https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-earnings-report-3318100/
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.
They don’t make OLED TVs. LG supplies samsung with the OLED panels for their TVs.
For everything samsung does, they can’t do the hard things. They can’t make OLED panels, they can’t make SoCs like Apple, and they can’t make software like Google.
Samsung does a ton of things…mid. That’s why they supply so many parts. Because the really difficult and innovative things are done by the people they sell parts to.
They do SoCs. Just no one uses them. Not even Samsung
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Either you make products that people want or you don’t, it seems pretty simple to me.
Imo even big companies fail to realize that they don’t know (or care) anymore what the customers want. Marketing used to be: analyze the market and find out what’s a good product to sell. Nowadays marketing is: make personalized ads and try to push whatever crap is cheap to produce to people who don’t realize they don’t even want this. Also make it look a lot better than it actually is.
Samsung, stop trying to imitate Apple, it’s no use. You don’t have the vendor lock-in and cult-like status to pull that off. Just make good products at affordable prices. Ask the customers what they want, it’s that easy.
Ask the customers what they want, it’s that easy.
Don’t forget though, that the typical customer may be very different from the bubble on this site.
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.
I think boomers are all retired, it’s gen X and Millennials that don’t breed
Numbers must only go up… no down
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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.
