At the same time that Apple’s profits are breaking records, this company’s execs didn’t have the same news.
According to the news on the latest mobile trends from Samsung when the South Korean company’s fourth quarter financial results were released, there was a 23 percent drop in smartphone, tablet, and wearable technology based revenues when compared to the same time in 2013.
During that same period, the mobile profits at the company fell even more dramatically, dropping by 64 percent.
In that fourth quarter, Samsung posted earnings of $1.8 billion. This mobile trend has been a continuing one for the company that has been experiencing a growing struggle in selling its less expensive smartphones in emerging markets, where there is notable competition in cheaply priced devices from rapidly growing brands in the tech industry such as Xiaomi. Moreover, Samsung has also placed itself at risk by moving toward powering its first phone with its Tizen operating system. Recent reports have indicated that the recent launch of that OS may not have been quite as positive as the company had likely hoped.
At the same time, the mobile trends with regards to the higher end offerings at Samsung aren’t looking much better.
At the same time that Apple’s popularity and successes have been skyrocketing since it has launched its larger screened iPhone 6 devices, Samsung’s high end devices have been continuing to do well, but not nearly to the degree of its top competition.
At the same time, it is important to note that while the growth may have slowed down by quite a bit, Samsung is far from seeing an all out halt in its unit sales. Recently, analysts from the Wall Street Journal predicted that the company had sold somewhere between 74 and 77 million smartphones within the last quarter of last year. That may be a notable stumble from the 86 million that were sold the year before in the same quarter, but it remains an exceptionally large figure.
It is clear that the mobile trends at Samsung are headed downward, but the size of the company’s sales still provides room for the brand to turn things around.
Though much of the mobile payments space is governed by NFC technology, Samsung Pay may not be exclusive to those with NFC-enabled devices. The new platform is expected to be able to support mobile transactions even without utilizing NFC technology. This could make it more accommodating to consumers that do not have NFC-enabled devices and make it more accessible to the retail industry as a whole. Retailers without NFC-enable point-of-sale systems would be able to accept transactions made through Samsung Pay.