What They Say
We reported the other day that Samsung had been caught up in a bit of a scandal over performance throttling. (Samsung Caught in Scandal over S22 Performance). At the company’s AGM, the Vice Chairman and co-CEO Han Jong-hee is reported by the Korea Herald to have bowed in apology to shareholders over the issue. The firm has said that it will fix the issue with a software update, but its reputation has been hard hit.
Asked about safety issues from overheating following the software update, Han said,
“We will secure safety using a heat control algorithm. We will continue to add new functions to prevent overheating.”
The company also talked at the meeting about its stopping of shipments of smartphones to Russia, where the Korea Herald reports that the firm had a 35% market share.
What We Think
Samsung seemed almost to be ‘teflon-coated’ compared to other brands such as Sony and Microsoft, for example, but the reaction to this scandal suggest that the status of the firm has now reached the same kind of level. Consumers invest a lot of emotion in their trusted brands and this kind of feeling of ‘betrayal’ can really hurt the brand. (BR)
Samsung’s Han Jong-hee, pictured when he was President Visual Display Business – Image: Samsung