Samsung warns sales and profits are going down the toilet

Korean giant Samsung has become the latest major tech company to warn about significant under-performance towards the end of 2018.

In its earnings guidance for Q4 18 Samsung Electronics advised that it expects sales of around 59 trillion Korean won and 10.8 trillion Korean won. In the same quarter a year ago it racked up sales of 66 trillion and profits of 15 trillion, so that’s a pretty major drop-off, especially for profit, with margin dropping from 23% to 18%.

Analysts expected a bit of a drop in profit, according to Bloomberg, but only as low at 13.8 trillion. The same story points the finger at the trade aggro between the US and China as a major reason for the drop off, citing reduced demand for memory chips which are a big thing for Samsung.

Among the companies presumably buying less chips is Apple, which also issued a sales warning last week, thanks largely to smartphone demand dropping off a cliff in China. Samsung has blamed its woes on ‘mounting macro uncertainties’ affecting chip sales and good old ‘intensifying competition’ in the smartphone market.

The latter claim seems somewhat implausible in the light of Apple’s recent admission. What seems more likely is that the downward trend in smartphone demand has accelerated, compounded by the fact that neither of Apple or Samsung’s latest flagship models offered much to entice people to upgrade. Two-year-old smartphones still do a decent job so upgrade cycles are extending, which means lower sales for the foreseeable future.