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.
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.
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
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
Imagine actually using an iPhone
Most of the western world doesn’t have to imagine
Imagine participating in brand-loyalty wars.
Firstly, it’s a joke, secondly, it’s more about OS and user experience and not brand loyalty. The fact that you don’t know that is a tell tale sign
Ok
Dunno if you’re taking the piss but they’re not that bad. Have an iPhone mini 13 I bought for €450 2nd hand with 100% battery health. Decent upgrade from an Xperia XZ1 compact. Needed a pocketable phone & the Asus Zenfone was too expensive.
Have to say, having the call audio levels, proximity sensor & speakers properly tuned to the hardware, software/security updates without having to run a non-official build of Lineage OS and AltStore-Linux for side-loading has been sweet.
I have for about a decade. I use my phone as my backup map when I am flying. It has to work, every time, without fail. I’ve never owned an android that could hold a candle to an iPhone for software stability.
Do you have any sources for this? Afaik Samsung phones are still massively popular with young people in Korea.
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?
No. Not at all.
If a company made one penny last quarter, and 10,000,000 this quarter, then their profit is up 10 billion percent. It’s a stupid headline.
Is it your belief that Samsung made hundreds of billions of dollars mysteriously in on huge surge?
Revenue matters more since companies tend to invest in future technology. Most serious business analysts would never talk about profit in percentages. This is clickbait. Hence why the stock price (determined by investors not Reddit tech refugees) is not suffering.
Samsung started removing useful features such as SD card readers and headphone jacks and increased the price at the same time.
They actually created a disincentive for consumers to purchase a new phone.
I wonder what could have possibly happened to their profits?
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.
When apple did them they were seen as reasons not to buy iPhones, now everyone has copied them it’s no longer a factor in whether you buy an iPhone or not.
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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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.
Would love to read more about the Bluetooth lag. Does it affect Bluetooth dac’s like the fiio btr5 as well?
Almost all of those are pretty niche problems though. Which explains why they just aren’t a high priority for manufacturers.
This exactly. I stopped buying Samsung phones when Samsung stopped making phones with SD cards and headphone jacks.
Wait… they’re removing SD cards?
What is this, 1995? /jk
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.
I stopped buying Samsung phones when Samsung stopped making phones with features I want such as an SD card and headphone Jack.
Either you make products that people want or you don’t, it seems pretty simple to me.
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.
I was just in a vacation rental looking at a Samsung mini-split AC and wondering if it was good or not haha.
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They do SoCs. Just no one uses them. Not even 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.
I stopped buying Samsung when they started with the Knox bullshit. I saw it as an anti-consumer move.
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.
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/
