Samsung's free-falling financial flameout Samsung's global Galaxy Note 7 recall has already wiped out 96 per cent of its mobile division's profit margins, the company announced yesterday. The division recorded a 2.4 trillion (tn) won (US$2.09bn) profit in Q3 2015, but that's plummeted to 0.1tn won (just $8.7 million) in Q3 2016. That dragged down Samsung Electronics …
should have been added. Like seat belts in a car. But seriously, what kind of stresses did they test these batteries for knowing they will get sat on, bent left on a charger for long times and if they expand they may come into contact with internal or external parts? If you make millions of something with that much stored power it better be close to bomb proof or some will become one.
"But seriously, what kind of stresses did they test these batteries for"
Given that only one model of the large range of mobile devices containing this battery technology that Samsung make that has had this sort of issue, I would take a guess that they used industry standard tests that have proved adequate in the past - in the future there may be additional tests. It now seems obvious that many users were doing something different when charging the phones than what the tests expected. It could turn out to be something as simple as leaving the phone turned on when it was being charged - or vice versa. I think it's reasonable to not jump to the conclusion that it was badly manufactured, inadequately tested, batteries, since batteries from both manufacturers exhibited the same problem.
Make no mistake, this could have happened to any cell phone manufacturer (and might well happen to others in the future) - this is no more a Samsung only problem than VW is the only car maker "optimizing" test results.
For the benefit of those whose fingers are hovering over the down vote button, no, I don't work for a cell phone manufacturer, much less Samsung, but I do work with some pretty clever technology in the optics field and am well aware of how long it can take to identify a manufacturing defect in the main product, a software bug or a bought in component fault. My favourite is a software defect that only appears if a specific software release upgrade path was followed - follow any one of several other upgrade paths and the problem never occurs.
Kernel, I up vote you. You are quite reasonable, but to go all in on a new technology with so much internal energy seems like a bit of gamble. Older battery tech fails at a predictable rate with predictable risks. Being first requires more due diligence when so much is at stake. I am only second guessing the disaster and could easily have been part of it if I were involved in it.
Personally, I believe there will be a fault found in the internal charging/battery management circuitry. They tried fitting different batteries and it didn't fix the problem. Maybe something as simple as a resistor being out of whack, a manufacturing fault, or an incorrect constant in the firmware.
Actually I would go on to say that if both batteries from different manufacturers were doing this then the blame is purely Samsungs for not testing their devices properly.
Waving away your responsibilities by saying "it could happen to anyone" isn't jusfitication for happening to your devices.
Nice speech though. You should go into politics.
Samsung has admitted they have no idea of the true cause at this point, and have pulled engineers off Galaxy S8 (which will delay it) to help them figure out the problem.
Given that phones containing both batteries that Samsung SDI made as well as a Chinese company that made the batteries for the ones sold in China (as well as all the replacement phones) were burning up, a battery problem seems extremely unlikely. They weren't using some novel type of battery after all, and while yes the occasional problem with lithium ion batteries can happen to anyone having so many failures over such a short period of time is unprecedented.
Something else was going on, and I'm sure eventually Samsung will figure it out. Until then it is probably good that the S8 will be delayed due to this detective work, as they obviously can't risk releasing it until they know for certain the cause of the Note 7 problems and thus can insure the S8 does not have the same fault!
You know what else has the same amount of stored energy as a typical 3000 mAh phablet battery? Four raisins.
Don't point the finger of blame in the wrong place...if someone invents a revolutionary new type of battery that stores 10x the energy in the same volume it may be much safer than lithium ion batteries depending on the materials and the design.
What is really stupid here is that a single product is having such a huge impact. Samsung manufacture across a wide range of industries, mobile phones is just a small part of that. Even if the shares are just the subsidiary, Samsung Electronics, it is moronic. More than likely that parasitic bunch of w*****s, Elliott have a deep hand in the share price.
So many problems in tech appear to end up at the door of Elliott it is simply unreal. And, remember that both they and their clients will be strenuously avoiding pay tax as well.
I have a seven year old flip phone and a two year old 'budget' tablet that work great for all the things and I have no desire to upgrade either device. AFAIK Samsung has a history of making reliable devices and unfortunately the exception to that happened to be a high-end flagship product.
I had pre-ordered the Note 7 and hence did get my mitts on it. I never had any issues with the original or the replacement one. The incident was very unfortunate and yes Samsung really needs to find out what went wrong and also what is wrong with their QA process.
As has been pointed out by another commentard this could happen to any manufacturer. I certainly am not going to shun them just because of one failed product and am eagerly waiting for Note 8 to be released as there really isn't anything else on the market quite like it (yes there is an LG with similar features, but it just is not quite a Note replacement).
>>As has been pointed out by another commentard this could happen to any manufacturer.<<
Yes, it could, but it doesn't because Samsung's business model is against Apple to quickly copy and rush a product to market. This strategy failed spectacularly and exposes a lot about Samsung.
The other difference is that Samsung is an electronics company, not a systems design company. Alas a lot of people when they look at a phone think electronics, but it is the systems and applications ecosystem that make smart phones interesting. That is what Apple invents.
...and you can just imagine the memos flying around to the engineering teams for all new and recently released shiny gadgets.
"Find the faults BEFORE they go out. If they;re already out, CHECK, CHECK and CHECK again to head off any problems that might be down the line. Whatever tests and checks you did, think of more and do them."
Unlike some companies I've dealt with, Samsung and similarly organised companies tend to react fairly well from the top down to incident like this. I'm no Samsung fanbois. In fact I don't think I've actually got any Samsung products at all right now apart from a company supplied Galaxy S5 phone (There's likely some components. Maybe Samsung RAM in one of the PCs, or a screen with a samsung panel)
The article states that the Note 7 debacle wiped out 96% of the profit margin of the mobile division. I think it is somewhat impressive they still made a profit (even if negligible) as having to recall a flagship product and swallow the cost of the BOM for all units.
Similar incident could easily sink a smaller company with less diverse product lines.
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