Samsung says the Galaxy S9 isn’t selling very well

By Sam Byford@345triangle 

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Samsung Electronics’ quarterly earnings are in, and as ever they’re right in line with guidance, meaning that the company’s run of record profits is at an end. Samsung made an operating profit of 14.87 trillion won ($13.3 billion) on sales of 58.4 trillion won ($52.1 billion); revenue was down 4 percent year on year.

According to Samsung, the drop in revenue can be put down to “softer sales of smartphones and display panels.” The company’s most important phone of the year, the Galaxy S9, went on sale at the end of the previous quarter, but Samsung describes its performance as “slow.” Earlier this month analysts predicted that it would be the worst-selling Galaxy S flagship phone since 2012’s Galaxy S3.

Samsung’s display business also had a rough quarter, with “weak demand” for flexible OLED panels as seen in products like the iPhone X, and LCD shipments falling in both price and quantity. The company does expect OLED demand to pick up in the second half of the year, and Apple’s reported plan to launch two new OLED iPhone models will likely help with that.

Bright spots include the TV division’s strong sales of premium models thanks to the World Cup, while Samsung’s major profit driver remains its semiconductor division — demand for NAND flash memory and DRAM chips isn’t going away any time soon. Samsung also says its image sensor business is growing due to Chinese companies using the chips in dual-camera smartphones.

iPhone 9 Leak Reveals Apple's Radical Design

We all know which is the most exciting model out of all Apple’s upcoming new iPhones, and it will also be the cheapest. The cost savings, however, were meant to come with one major compromise. But now this phone seems almost too good to be true… 

In a fascinating new report, acclaimed Japanese website Macotakara revealed Apple’s so-called iPhone 9 or ‘budget iPhone X’ will use a radical display technology called ‘Full Active LCD’. This allows the budget model to have even thinner bezels than the second generation iPhone X (details) and new iPhone X Plus (details).

iPhone 9 render beside iPhone X Plus showing slightly bigger bezels which may now be avoidedBEN GESKIN

What enables this is a touch sensor made by Apple partner Japan Pixels, which it calls ‘Japan Pixel Eyes’. 9to5Mac notes a Full Active LCD means manufacturers can have bezels as thin as 0.5mm when the current iPhone X has a 1mm bezel. 9to5Mac also cites the Wall Street Journal which wrote back in September 2017 that Apple was using Japan Display to develop a Full Active LCD.

There’s just one problem.

Macotakara states that mass manufacturing of Full Active LCDs has a very high failure rate and this has impacted iPhone 9 production to the extent it may delay the launch until from September to November. A hold-up which was already leaked earlier this week. For my money though, a Full Active LCD iPhone 9 would be well worth the wait.

Interestingly, Macotakara’s report puts it in a face-off with popular leakers Ben Geskin (who successfully leaked the iPhone X last year) and Ice Universe (who has leaked the last three flagship Samsung Galaxy phones), as both believe the iPhone 9 will launch with larger bezels (1,2).

3D print of Apple’s iPhone 9 (left) illustrates how bad thick lookMAC OTAKARA

For its part, Macotakara has multiple scoops to its name, including that Apple would pull the headphone jack from the iPhone 7. Someone has to be wrong, and given 3D modelling has shown an iPhone 9 with larger bezels looks terrible – we have to hope Macotakara wins out.

Either way, 2019 is clearly the year Apple starts taking risks again (including with its premium models) and that’s great to see. Especially if the widely reported leaks of substantial price cuts turn out to be true...