Samsung recently pre-announced second-quarter earnings that badly missed analysts’ consensus. More importantly, of course, Samsung’s profit plummeted to its lowest point in two years. The tech giant’s poor performance was attributed to weakening smartphone sales that have slowed as competition increased at the low end, and we also learned recently that Samsung’s new flagship Galaxy S5 couldn’t even top sales of Apple’s iPhone 5s during its first full month of sales.
According to a new report, Samsung’s weakening phone sales have prompted hundreds of managers in the company’s devices division to give back part of their first-half bonuses.
Reuters on Friday cited a single unnamed source in reporting that nearly 200 managers working in Samsung’s handset division have voluntarily returned portions of the bonuses they received for the first half of 2014. The report says that the move was a gesture to show that the managers take responsibility for the company’s declining smartphone sales, and to show that they will work harder to reverse the trend.
Samsung said that its second-quarter operating profit likely fell to $7.1 billion, down a whopping 24% on year, on revenue totaling $51.4 billion.
