Samsung Plans To Cut 10% Staff At Its Headquarters After Losing Sales: Report

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd is planning to cut 10 percent of staff at its headquarters in South Korea, a local newspaper said Tuesday. The move comes as the world’s biggest smartphone maker loses sales to Apple Inc. and Chinese vendors.

According to Korea Economic Daily, cited by Bloomberg, the company is targeting workers in the human resources, public relations and finance departments. The Suwon-based company also plans to cut expenses next year, the report said, citing anonymous sources. However, Samsung declined to comment on the report, according to Bloomberg.

Samsung’s new high-end Galaxy smartphones failed to impress consumers, triggering a decline for five straight months and slashing more than $40 billion in its market value since April. Also, despite releasing its new Galaxy models ahead of Apple's upcoming product launch, Samsung could not ease market concerns about its second-half earnings.

The company’s share of global smartphone shipments went down in the second quarter by over 3 percentage points, and it no longer owns the title of the top seller in China, the world’s biggest mobile phone market.

Samsung’s headquarters in Suwon had over 98,000 employees as of June 30, according to a regulatory filing.

“Cutting jobs is the easiest way to control costs and Samsung’s spending on mobile business could also be more tightly controlled,” Chung Chang Won, an analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc. in Seoul, told Bloomberg. “Samsung’s preparing to tighten its belt as it isn’t likely see rapid profit growth in the years to come.”