Samsung Electronics Co expects international economic growth to remain weak this year and urged employees to brainstorm ways to handle intensifying competition in an industry where software and platforms are eclipsing hardware.
Company vice chairman and co-chief executive officer Kwon Oh-hyun said products including smartphones, televisions and memory chips are likely to face escalated competition this year. Innovative business models are weakening traditional hardware values and workers must adapt to maintain leadership in an industry changing at its fastest pace ever, he said.
“The territories of industries are collapsing,” Kwon said. “We have to compete in a new way that we’ve never experienced in the past.”
Executives have preached the need to focus on software for years. Yet Korea’s largest listed company and the world’s largest smartphone maker has lagged Apple Inc in developing mobile-friendly software and a unique platform that can lock in users.
“The competition landscape is changing to software and platforms, so we need to build a new system and competence,” Kwon said in a speech distributed to the media.
In a signal of its newfound priorities, Samsung replaced the head of its phone operations last month with an executive, Koh Dong-jin, who helped create its mobile payment and security platforms.
Koh is expected to turn around a division that still leads the world in smartphone sales, yet has lost favor with investors.
Samsung lost more than US$8 billion in market value last year as sales of high-end S6 and Note 5 devices sputtered against new models from Apple and Chinese makers. Its shares posted a third straight annual decline last year, dropping 5.1 percent.
The company is expected to release its preliminary fourth-quarter earnings on Friday. Net income in 2014 is projected to be the lowest profit in four years, analyst estimates show.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure