Samsung, the leading mobile handset maker, has been losing its market share in Bangladesh in recent times. It currently holds less than 10% of the entire handset market in Bangladesh. The South Korean tech-giant is also laying employs off as their business is shrinking, reports Banik Barta.
Samsung played a huge role in mainstreaming android smartphones in Bangladesh. It dominated the market for quite a long time with its android devices. Just a year ago, the company’s Smartphone Cafés, Samsung’s own distribution shops, flooded the cities. while it has successfully ruled the high-end android device market, it failed to translate its success to low-end android device market, where a host of local and Chinese handset companies came to take the market share away.
Symphony, the once local underdog handset brand, now dominates the market. This local brand , while started at the bottom, now offers a wide range of devices. Walton, Huawei and a host of other handset companies now gaining foot in the market while Samsung got sidelined.
Samsung started its Bangladesh Research and Development (R&D) Center in 2010. The number of engineers was initially quite nominal, but within 2014 the total number of engineers employed at the R&D center reached 650. Samsung mainly deals with mobile phones in Bangladesh. Besides that, they work on IOT, Smart TV, algorithm development, and image processing as well.
Since last quarter of 2014, Samsung has been facing sales slump. There was a number of complaints lodged against this company for misconduct. Due to the low profit margin, it closed two R&D centers and made many employees to go into forced retirement. Moreover, many of the Bangladesh R&D center's job was transferred to the R&D facilities in India and Vietnam.
It is notable that about 0.32 million people are working globally at Samsung around 84 countries. Their annual revenue is US$ 250 billion dollar worldwide.
