Last year was bad for Samsung. Its revenue and profit took extreme hits, and the company has been under pressure from competition and the global economic downturn. While its profit increased in the first quarter of this year, Samsung has reportedly switched to a six-day workweek to inject a sense of crisis in its employees.
Samsung hopes to improve its business with this drastic step
Samsung Electronics introduced an emergency six-day workweek policy for its executives. The company hopes this change will invoke a sense of crisis in its employees and improve its fortunes in the coming months. Apart from heightened competition from Apple and Chinese firms in the consumer electronics segment, the company faces pressure from Micron, SK Hynix, and TSMC in the semiconductor segment. The Korean currency has depreciated, and the current global economic woes have no end in sight.
Despite spending billions of dollars on its semiconductor business, which is its most important revenue-generating business, Samsung’s fortunes haven’t changed. TSMC is stealing away Samsung’s high-profile customers, and there are currently no confirmed takers for its advanced 3nm chip fabrication process. SK Hynix has been Nvidia’s most favored memory provider for AI chips, and Samsung has only now received some orders from Nvidia. So, it feels like it has missed many revenue opportunities over the past year.
In the smartphone segment, Apple defeated Samsung in the global market last year, shipping more phones than Samsung for the first time. While the South Korean firm returned strongly in Q1 2024 and won back the smartphone shipments crown, only time will tell if it can maintain the lead for the rest of the year. Chinese smartphone firms are chipping away at Samsung’s market share in Asian and European markets.
Samsung Group’s other affiliates, including Samsung SDI and Samsung SDS, have already switched to a voluntary six-day workweek. Hopefully, this will improve the company’s outcome for the rest of the year.