Samsung is struggling with disappointing smartphone sales in Europe

Samsung warns that it will sell fewer smartphones. Especially in Europe and China, the market leader is stuck with increased competition with larger stocks of unsold low-end and midrange devices.

Samsung cites those large stocks as one of the reasons why profits are lower than last year’s, but the manufacturer points to more causes. One of the most important is that the Korean won is strong against the dollar and the euro, among others. According to Samsung, the entire smartphone market is expected to show disappointing growth and disappointing sales in Europe have led to higher inventories, according to the announcement accompanying the profit warning, which The Wall Street Journal publishes.

In addition, Samsung is struggling in Europe, but especially in China, with increased competition. In China, companies such as Xiaomi, Huawei, Lenovo and Oppo are working hard with cheaper smartphones. Further impact would be that consumers buy fewer tablets than smartphones and that sales of large smartphones impact sales of small tablets with 7″ and 8″ screens: Samsung has already released many new tablets this year. Finally, the marketing costs increased further for Samsung in the second quarter.

For the coming quarter, Samsung expects higher results and smartphone sales to pick up, partly due to an upcoming release of a new smartphone line. Samsung indicates that it does not expect any further increase in marketing costs. Samsung expects a profit of 7.2 trillion won, converted 5.3 billion euros, and a turnover of 52 trillion won, converted 37.9 billion euros, in the current quarter.

Samsung had to deal with a major robbery of smartphones, tablets, laptops and other electronics in the Brazilian district of São Paulo. The stolen goods had a value of 6.3 million dollars, converted 4.6 million euros. A group of about twenty men armed with machine guns broke into a factory and filled seven trucks with the Samsung devices. The thieves stayed at the site for three hours, holding some of the employees hostage, but they did not use any force. Other night shift employees at the location continued to work, but the criminals had removed the battery from their phones to prevent them from sounding the alarm, ZDNet writes.