Why Coronavirus Outbreak Won’t Be Much Of A Burden For Samsung

The current Coronavirus outbreak in China is causing a lot of problems for big-name tech companies such as Apple and Huawei. Yet, despite the increase in the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 affecting many people in different countries, one tech giant in particular won't be affected by it as much as it did the aforementioned companies. This tech company is Samsung.

To date, there's been a total of 75,226 confirmed and reported cases of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus infecting people, according to monitoring site Worldometers. Although some of these have recovered from the infection, 58,352 cases currently remain. These cases are found in more than 20 countries.

The outbreak has caused so much worry and fears among many that businesses needed to shut themselves down temporarily so as to mitigate the potential losses. Cupertino-based tech giant Apple itself needed to, for a time, close all stores, offices and production in its locations in China so as to make sure that its workers are safe from the virus.

Apple previously unveiled that it expects its revenues to be affected by the COVID-19 outbreak in China, and has moved the production of its devices outside the Asian country to other locations such as India and Taiwan. Analysts expect Cupertino's shipments to take a hit due to the virus.

Other companies such as Xiaomi and Huawei are also expected to take a hit, Reuters reported. Xiaomi already announced that its sales for the quarter are affected. Huawei hasn't officially announced anything to that effect yet, but analysts believe that it will be heavily affected due to its dependency on parts and labor, both of which are sourced from China.

But while these companies all suffer from the serious effects of COVID-19 on the Chinese workforce, tech giant Samsung doesn't seem to suffer as much. The Korean company, which has just unveiled a slew of products including the Galaxy Z Flip and Galaxy S20 series, appears to benefit from the virus's impact on its rivals, Reuters reported.

According to an anonymous source that spoke with Reuters, “Samsung is better positioned to weather the virus fallout” compared to its rivals simply because it does not rely on Chinese parts and labor. Half of the Korean giant's smartphones are manufactured in Vietnam, which is far from the epicenter of the current crisis.

“Samsung does not say it publicly. But it is relieved,” another person with knowledge about Samsung's thinking told Reuters.