The South Korean tech giant Samsung has apparently taken the decision to slash its phone production by about 30% this year in light of the heightened crisis because of the pandemic. A new report has informed that Samsung will be cutting production of its low to mid-end devices as well as the flagship smartphones. The company was setting a target of 310 million units for the year 2022 which has now reportedly been brought down to 280 million units.
The Adverse Effects of Pandemic
The report comes in from SamMobile according to which Samsung had initially planned to manufacture more than 300 million units in the year, which is a number that hasn’t been achieved since 2017. But the situation doesn’t seem to be improving as the effects of the pandemic have worsened the global economy resulting in reduced demand and hence action was required to be taken.
But Samsung isn’t the only company that has chosen this path, as various other manufacturers had to cut their production as well because of the effects of the pandemic. To overcome the ongoing challenging environment, the Cupertino-based tech giant Apple had to reduce its smartphone production for 2022 as well. Reports suggest that the company had reduced the production of its iPhone SE by 20%.
Samsung Exiting Feature Phone Market
In related news, Samsung is also reportedly planning to exit the feature phone market in India, which is low in price but high in volume. The company is planning to manufacture the last set of feature phones in the country with its contract manufacturing partner Dixon by this December. Reports have suggested that Samsung is looking to focus on smartphones that are priced at Rs 15,000 or above.
Samsung has already spoken to its channel partners and notified them about exiting the feature phone market in the country by the end of 2022. This might also be because of the fact that the feature phone market is declining rapidly with newer age technologies coming at affordable rates to the market. Research suggests that feature phone shipment fell by 39% YoY in the first quarter of 2022. Moreover, the telecom operators are also encouraging the users in India to shift to smartphones capable of 4G and 5G connectivity.
