According to the new report, Samsung held this rare meeting of CEOs from all its business divisions and affiliates this Monday. The high-level meeting took place at the Samsung Electronics Leadership Center in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province of South Korea. The executives shared the business performances of their respective divisions and discussed strategies for the coming years to tackle the macroeconomic challenges. The company’s Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong was curiously missing from the meeting, though. Among the topics discussed in this meeting of Samsung CEOs were declining chip prices, dipping currency rates, and rate hikes, unnamed industry sources told the publication. The company has been struggling to move smartphones off store shelves, leading to an inventory pile-up. It has already adjusted its 2022 smartphone sales target twice this year. But it may still fall short of the target. Even its foldables are losing traction in the market. The story isn’t any better in the semiconductor unit either. While it continues to lead the memory chips market, TSMC is giving the Korean behemoth a tough time in the foundry sector. The Taiwanese firm has stolen many of Samsung’s big chip clients in recent months, including Qualcomm and Tesla. Even Samsung’s mobile unit is walking away from its sister firm’s flagship Exynos processors due to poor performance. The Galaxy S23 series will use Qualcomm’s TSMC-made Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 globally.
Samsung gathers all its CEOs in a rare meeting
As said earlier, this kind of meeting between Samsung’s CEOs across the group is quite rare. It hadn’t held any such meeting since dissolving the group’s control tower, the Future Strategy Office, in 2017. But the company seems to have entered panic mode as the global inflation crisis affect its businesses. In June, Samsung held a meeting of 25 CEOs from its tech businesses, including Samsung Electronics, Samsung Display, and Samsung SDI. This week’s gathering appears to be an even bigger one. Industry sources suggest Samsung is staring at a worse 2023 after a poor 2022, in terms of financial outlook. Its Electronics division, which is regarded as the company’s “crown jewel,” may end up losing money this quarter rather than raking in profits. Market research firms are already estimating a sharp decline in the company’s revenue and profit in the coming quarters. Time will tell whether Samsung can build a strategy to turn things around following this rare meeting of its CEOs.
