SEOUL/SHANGHAI: South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said it plans to cut production at a smartphone plant in China, as competition from domestic rivals squeezes its share of the world’s biggest smartphone market to less than a paltry 1 per cent.
The output reduction at the factory in the southern city of Huizhou comes just six months after Samsung said it would close its only other handset plant in China, in the northeastern city of Tianjin, in a move it said would enhance efficiency.
Samsung, the world’s biggest smartphone maker, has seen its share of China’s market shrink from about 20 per cent in 2013, showed data from Strategy Analytics. The intervening years have seen a bout of anti-South Korean sentiment following a diplomatic spat, as well as a shift to local champions like Huawei Technologies Co Ltd at a time of deteriorating Sino-US relations.
In the three months of 2019, however, Samsung’s smartphone sales volume in China rose 40 per cent versus the previous three months, helped strong promotion of premium models and cheaper mass-market handsets, according to data.
— Reuters
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