Mexico City /
Samsung Electronics he has difficulty keeping his crown as the maker of the world’s best-selling smartphone, aggravating the growing crisis at South Korea’s largest company.
The Korean technology giant was the only one of the top five global smartphone makers to experienced a drop in shipments in the third quarter of this yearlosing market share to Apple and Chinese contenders offering sleek new foldable devices.
Samsung’s global market share in the third quarter fell from 21 percent to 18 percent year over year, according to IDC, and its lead over Apple narrowed to 0.6 percent. Analysts estimate that The operating profit of its smartphone division fell up to 30 percent during the same period.
“Samsung’s smartphone business is stagnant,” said Park Kang-ho, an analyst at Daishin Securities. “The company hoped that foldable phones would give it an advantage over Apple, but consumer reaction has been lukewarm. “Now Chinese companies are pushing foldable phones to steal market share from Samsung.”
Samsung’s 12-year reign as the world’s leading smartphone maker, by mobile device sales ended last year, when Apple briefly reached the top spot, before the Korean group regained its lead in the first quarter.
However, research group TechInsights hopes that Apple’s new generative artificial intelligence (AI) features will help push the American company to surpass Samsung next year.
“Chinese brands have become much more competitivenot only in prices but also in functions,” said a Samsung worker in the smartphone division. “We are concerned about the movements of our rivals and we are attentive to how the new iPhones perform.”
The Asian company’s problems with smartphones come at a critical time. Samsung has suffered a series of failures in its semiconductor division, which represents 60 percent of its operating profits. The head of the chip unit issued a rare apology this month after falling further behind smaller rival SK Hynix in developing next-generation memory chips for AI-related hardware.
Observers argue that many of the problems in the conglomerate’s various divisions are interrelated, and point to reports that in Samsung could be forced to resort to the mobile application processor chip of its American rival Qualcomm for its next flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S25, due to the lower performance of the self-made Exynos processors. Samsung declined to comment on the reports. The company’s share price has fallen 27 percent compared to the previous year.
“Samsung faces growing structural problems in most of its businesses where it used to be dominant, from chips to smartphones to displays, because of its complacency and bureaucracy,” said Park Ju-geun, director of corporate research group Leaders Index.
In the smartphone market, Samsung was a pioneer in foldable devicesbut it ceded the top spot earlier this year to rival Huawei, which had a 27.5 percent share of the foldable market in the second quarter, compared with 16.4 percent for Samsung, according to IDC.
Yes ok Foldable phones barely represent 1.2 percent of the global market of smartphones, constitute the fastest growing segment of an otherwise relatively stagnant sector.
Huawei also scored a symbolic victory last month when it launched the world’s first “triple-folding” phone, the Mate XT, which is priced at almost three thousand dollars.
Honor, another fast-growing Chinese rival, mocked the Korean company at a trade show in Berlin last monthby recording a “micro apology” on its Magic V3 foldable for consumers who endured Samsung’s “more robust alternative.”
Samsung is trying to fight back with a thinner and lighter “Special Edition” Galaxy Z Fold 6, but its delayed domestic launch on Friday was widely criticized because the new model did not actually appear in stores. Samsung said it could not prepare enough initial volume.
The company added that its flagship Galaxy S24 series with AI features, which launched in January, was “warmly received,” exceeding its expectations, adding that Galaxy AI will be accessible on around 200 million Galaxy devices this year.
The key test, analysts said, will be the performance of its flagship Galaxy S25 model due out in January, which will have to compete with iPhones and Android devices that have AI features.
Counterpoint Research analyst Jene Park said: “They really need to show differentiated AI services that can surprise people continue to enjoy the first-mover advantage”.
CHC