Samsung is to cut jobs and expenditure at its headquarters in anticipation of a slump in the smartphone market, according to a Korean financial newspaper.
The company will make 10% of its support employees redundant and cut general expenditure by 50% in the next year, writes the Korea Economic Daily.
The cuts focus on back-office staff in finance, communications and human resources, and are being made in advance of what the company fears may be a difficult year. In July 2015, it reported the seventh consecutive quarter in a row of falling year-on-year profits, with disappointing sales of the company’s Galaxy S6 phone contributing to a meagre bottom line.
Globally, the company’s market share fell to 24.2% in the first quarter of 2015, according to the analysts Gartner, leaving it still the largest single smartphone maker by unit sales but down from 30.4% the year before.
The company has been struggling to hold its own against younger manufacturers from China such as Huawei and Xaiomi, which have been eating away at its market share from the low end, particularly among Chinese consumers, and are increasingly challenging Samsung’s flagship phones directly.
The Korea Economic Daily reports that the company also intends to cut back on general expenditure by 50%. Those cuts follow 1.8trn won (£1bn) saved “in selling and administrative expenses in the first half of this year by not spending already-planned budget items”, the paper says.
