Samsung expects profit to drop in Q2 as Covid-19 hits phone, TV sales

The South Korean conglomerate joins other tech giants in warning of uncertainty over how long the coronavirus will continue to hurt the industry.

Samsung Electronics on Wednesday said it expected its profit to decline in the current quarter due to a coronavirus-related slump in sales of smartphones and TVs, even as its chip business would remain solid.

The company said its operating profit rose 3 per cent in the January-March period, in line with an earlier estimate, as work-from-home orders boosted demand for server and computer chips.

The South Korean conglomerate joined other tech giants in warning of uncertainty over how long the coronavirus would continue to hurt the industry. "In the second half, uncertainties driven by Covid-19 will persist as the duration and impact of the pandemic remain unknown," Samsung said in a statement.

Other chipmakers SK Hynix and Intel last week posted forecast-beating first-quarter earnings, but did not provide full-year forecasts. Samsung Electronics reported an operating profit of 6.4 trillion won ($5.2 billion), compared with 6.2 trillion won a year ago. The world's top maker of memory chips and smartphones said its net profit fell 3 per cent to 4.9 trillion won, while revenue climbed 5.6 per cent to 55.3 trillion won.

Samsung's chip business is benefiting from demand for servers and computers as stay-at-home orders force millions of people around the world to convert their homes into offices.

But sales of TVs and smartphones have slowed, as recession-wary consumers postpone purchases of non-essential consumer electronics, a trend seen across the global tech industry.

"Sales and profits of set products business, including smartphones and TVs, are expected to decline significantly as Covid-19 affects demand and leads to store and plant closures globally," Samsung said in a statement. The company's shares fell 0.8 per cent in a flat wider market in morning trade on Wednesday.

Samsung gives a glimpse of new foldable phone in surprise ad during Oscars

The ad comes two days before its Galaxy Z Flip phones are due to be unveiled at an event in San Francisco.

Samsung Electronics, the world's top smartphone maker, gave a glimpse of new square-shaped foldable phones in a surprise TV commercial aired during the Academy Awards on Sunday.

The ad, broadcast only in the United States, comes two days before its Galaxy Z Flip phones, which open and close vertically like a flip phone, are due to be unveiled at an event in San Francisco.

While there were many shots of the phones, which come in at least purple and black, there were few other details.

They are, however, expected to be less expensive than the $1,980 Galaxy Fold which opens like a book and was launched in September, delayed by several months after problems with its screens.

"The new Galaxy Z Flip foldable phone will create a halo effect for Samsung's brand and help it better compete with Apple's pricey models," said Tom Kang, an analyst at research firm Counterpoint, adding that Samsung had taken the lead in foldable phones at a time when Chinese rivals looked set to leap into the nascent market.

Technology News

Asia's mega rich take a hit with $137 billion in combined losses in 2018

India's 23 richest people, meanwhile, saw $21 billion vanish.The world’s fastest growing source of mega-wealth hit a speed bump this year.

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The 128 people in Asia with enough money to crack the 500-member Bloomberg Billionaires Index lost a combined $137 billion in 2018, the first time wealth in the region has dropped since the ranking started in 2012.

Global trade tensions and concerns that stock valuations are too frothy hammered some of the area’s biggest fortunes. China’s tech sector was hit particularly hard, while India and South Korea weren’t spared. The declines occurred even as banks and money managers aggressively stepped up efforts to cater to Asia’s richest.

“Difficult stock market conditions this year and the uncertainty of the trade tensions likely have been a challenge to many businesses,” said Philip Wyatt, a Hong Kong-based economist for UBS Group AG, who doesn’t see the downdraft continuing through 2019 or significantly reducing the ranks of billionaires. Conditions are actually ripe for the region to create more of the mega rich as new technologies attract private capital and government support, he said.

For now, though, fear in the market is trampling fortunes. More than two-thirds of the 40 Chinese on the Bloomberg ranking saw their wealth dwindle. Wanda Group’s Wang Jianlin, whose property conglomerate is selling assets to cut debt, lost $10.8 billion, the most of anyone in Asia. JD.com founder Richard Liu, who was arrested in the U.S. in August for less than 24 hours on suspicion of rape before being released, took the heaviest losses in percentage terms, with his wealth cut almost in half to $4.8 billion. No charges have been filed against Liu, who has denied the allegation.

India’s 23 richest people, meanwhile, saw $21 billion vanish. Lakshmi Mittal, who controls the world’s largest steelmaker, led the way, losing $5.6 billion, or 29 percent of his net worth, followed by Dilip Shanghvi, the founder of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, the world’s fourth-largest generic drugmaker, whose wealth declined $4.6 billion.
South Korea’s tycoons didn’t escape the carnage either. The market rout lopped $17.2 billion from the fortunes of the country’s seven richest people. The father and son who control Samsung Electronics, Lee Kun-Hee and son Jay Y Lee, account for more than a third of that decline.

In Hong Kong, titans of real estate took a big hit. Li Ka-shing, who retired as chairman of CK Hutchison and CK Asset in March, lost $6 billion in 2018, while Lee Shau Kee, the city’s second-richest person, ends the year about $3.3 billion poorer.
There were still plenty of winners to emerge from the wreckage of 2018.
Lei Jun, the chairman of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp., added $8.7 billion, with a July initial public offering catapulting him into the Top 100 of the Bloomberg index after he started the year outside the ranking. The IPO also turned three of his co-founders into billionaires.

Business Standard

Samsung smartphones with flexible, folding screens could soon be a reality

Businesss Standard : Samsung's flexible OLED screen is likely to be have the most basic level of flexibility.

We rarely see a truly remarkable new technology more than once a decade. After years of undelivered promises, such a technology looks finally set to enter the market: the flexible computer screen.

Imagine, a tablet display you can fold up and put in your pocket, a smartwatch whose strap is the screen, or a handbag that is also a monitor and keyboard. Nokia originally called this proposed technology “Morph” back in 2008 because of the plethora of applications it would make possible. Now it looks like it will become a reality.

After nearly two decades of work, Samsung is rumoured to be getting ready for the launch of the first flexible smartphone. The company’s head of mobile recently said it was “time to deliver” such a phone, and that the development process for it was “nearly concluded”.

But perhaps more significantly, the Samsung Display division of the company recently said it had developed an “unbreakable smartphone panel” that had passed rigorous safety testing. Even after being subjected to temperatures of 71˚C and -32˚C, and dropped from a height of 1.8 metres, the display showed no signs of damage and functioned normally.

This display is a flexible organic light emitting diode (OLED) panel made of an unbreakable surface with a plastic overlay window attached to it, making it simultaneously lightweight and tough as glass but a lot more robust. Manufacturers have yearned for many years to make displays with flexible, bendable properties and a paper-like feel with electronic functionality. If Samsung has truly found a way to protect a flexible OLED then it has solved a major technical challenge in removing the need for the glass screens used on most other displays today.

Glass was originally needed to actually stop displays from bending. Old-fashioned liquid crystal displays easily distorted when bent because the molecules in the liquid inside them would become misaligned. Today’s OLED screens are based on a solid layer of light-emitting material that doesn’t easily distort in this way. But glass is also used to protect the organic molecules in an OLED display from being degraded by water vapour and other gases that would shorten their lifespan.

Until now, encapsulating displays in flexible plastic hasn’t been enough to protect them.

A more advanced, better quality kind of screen known as a quantum dot light emitting diode (QLED) display can also be made flexible. These use nano-crystals to produce high-quality, pure and sharp monochromatic light. They convert the backlight into the pure basic colours without the use of filters. But encapsulating QLED displays is even harder than OLEDs and so are likely to take a lot longer to turn into a flexible product....Read More