Samsung Is Down $26 Billion After the Galaxy Note 7 Fiasco
If you have any spare positive vibes today, you might want to direct them at Samsung. If you’ve been keeping up with the news, you’ll know the company recently recalled nearly all of the Galaxy Note 7 devices they’ve sold this year (save for the ones sold in China, as those came from a different supplier), due to faulty batteries that would overheat and, at times, explode. You read that right, and also: Yikes. With about 2.5 million units shipped before the recall, this is bad, bad news for the Korean tech giant: about $26 billion bad.
With over 70 reported exploding battery cases — including one story of a six-year-old getting burned — the debacle is more than just a case of bad press. Despite issuing a massive recall, offering a trade-in (pending approval from US Consumer Product Safety Commission) and even issuing a $25 credits for amends, Samsung is down $26 billion in market value. According to Forbes, the chaebol (that’s Korean for family-owned conglomerate) was worth $161 billion back in May 2016. That’s a whopping 16 percent in the span of four months! And in terms of actual profit, experts are estimating that Samsung could lose up to $900 million in the third-quarter of 2016 alone. Needless to say, the company is likely in crisis mode right now.
The situation is so bad, tech analyst Rob Enderle speculates to Inquisitrthat, in order to recoup some of the lost value, Samsung may have to abandon the Note 7 and push up the release of the Galaxy Note 8. Eeks! If that’s truly the case, we hope they’ve thoroughly tested the product before release.
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(Photo via Samsung + Drew Angerer/Getty)