An interesting report surfaced on Reuters which claims that Samsung will likely pin the blame for their exploding Galaxy Note7 smartphones on the battery. The thing is, this is already something the company has done in the past — hence the recall — but that didn’t turn out so well for them when the replacement units themselves started catching fire too.
Reuters’ report comes from an anonymous source that was “familiar with the matter”. This person told Reuters that Samsung’s probe had come to a conclusion and that the company is now able to replicate the fires during its investigation, allowing them to identify that “the cause of the fires could not be explained by hardware design or software related matters”.
However, IDC Singapore-based analyst Bryan Ma said that it would be surprising to him if Samsung says it’s a supplier issue. He personally suspects that Samsung may not have given enough room for the battery inside the smartphone — a suspicion that is also shared by others who have torn the phone down.
Reuters reports that the results of the investigation will likely be announced on January 23rd — a day before Samsung announces detailed fourth-quarter earnings results. Analysts and investors have noted that it is crucial for the South Korean electronics giant to provide a “convincing and detailed explanation” for what went wrong with the smartphone. The company also needs to come up with a solution that will prevent this from happening in future smartphones if they want to regain consumer trust.
With the launch of the company’s next big smartphone — the S8 — likely to take place within the first half of this year, though likely not at Mobile World Congress 2017, regaining consumer trust needs to be Samsung’s top priority.
Although the whole Note7 fiasco dealt a KRW6.1 trillion (about RM23 billion) blow to the company’s operating profit over three quarters, Reuters reports that Samsung’s profits are expected to rise sharply on the back of rising memory chip prices and growing sales of OLED screens for smartphones.
Well, whatever the case, all will be revealed in due time. Let’s just hope this doesn’t continue on the Galaxy S8.
