In the past week or so, there have been at least two reports of Samsung’s latest flagship device, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 exploding while being charged. Unfortunately, these couple of incidents obviously did not have a positive outcome for Samsung, with the company’s stock prices dropping to a two-week low. Samsung share prices which hit a record high of 1.694 million won last week, fell 2% this week alone. The South Korean company has also delayed shipments of the device and some speculate that it is due to the company performing additional quality tests on the Galaxy Note 7. Local reports from South Korea have indicated that the country’s main carriers such as SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus Corp, have all been affected by the delays.
While some have pointed out that it might be faulty batteries in the Galaxy Note 7 which may have caused the devices to explode, Samsung SDI has come out to claim that it has received no information regarding the batteries being faulty. Samsung SDI happens to be a sister company of Samsung Electronics, and is also one of the major battery suppliers for the Galaxy Note 7. Samsung SDI share prices also took a tumble this week, dropping 6.1%. There have also been reports that Samsung will soon issue a recall of all affected Galaxy Note 7 units which have been sold, with plans to replace the batteries in these devices instead of giving the users a new device. However, Samsung has yet to make an official statement regarding the recall.
The Galaxy Note 7 happens to be the best selling device in Samsung’s ‘Galaxy Note’ lineup and has since sold 500,000 units worldwide, with this value rising rapidly. Strong sales of the Galaxy Note 7 is following the trend of the brisk sales of the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge which were released in March of this year. If Samsung does not address the Galaxy Note 7 problem soon, the company risks making a repeat of last years disappointing sale of the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, which resulted from production issues with the manufacturing of the curved displays present of the Galaxy S6 Edge.