These days, the entire media is filled with news on how Samsung has stopped the Note 7’s production and recalled its devices back. Without a doubt, this is huge hit for Samsung and its image. From now on, the company will have to start working on winning customers’ trust back.
Key points
It seems that Samsung Note 7 owners have gone through a dangerous experience. These owners have carried the phone in their jeans or left it charging when they weren’t home. Imagine what tragedy could have been if the phone had exploded.
For example, a 13-year-old girl was at school when her just-replaced phone started burning in her hand.
This is a hard to forget experience and Samsung will have to work at its trust again.
As a reminder, last week, the company has decided to make an incredible step of permanently halting the sale and production of their Note 7.
Moreover, 2.5 million phones have been recalled just a month ago, but also the ones meant to replace them.
Samsung tried to keep details to a minimum, declaring that it is “taking our customer’s safety as our highest priority.”
The fact that we are dealing with potentially a second recall on top of a first recall is not your normal situation and indicative of a less-than-ideal process that should have involved earlier coordination with the government,” has declared Elliot F. Kaye, chairman of the safety commission.
On the other side, a Samsung spokeswoman has declared that
For the benefit of consumers’ safety, we stopped sales and exchanges of the Galaxy Note 7 and have consequently decided to stop production.”
Deciding to stop the production of the Note 7 makes this a similar case to Tylenol’s 1980s recall, which is now a case of study in business schools.
As a reminder, in 1982 seven people died after taking cyanide-laced capsules of Extra-Strenght Tylenol. This was the company’s best-selling product.
After the incident, the company has yanked 30 million bottles of capsules from stores. Ironic or not, after two months, this product was back on the market with a tamper-proof packaging and a huge media campaign.
So, this makes us ask how quickly will Samsung emerge from the Note 7 fiasco? Without a doubt, at this moment the company is facing a substantial and financial blow.
You cannot really calculate the loss of consumer trust in money.”
It has been said that Samsung must realize that it “didn’t take many years for Nokia to tumble from its position as the world’s top cellphone maker,” an editorial in South Korea’s largest newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo, wrote.
The company puts all the blames on the battery. As we know, all smartphones are pushing batteries to the limit, meaning that the entire electronics industry is playing with fire. But, normally, lithium-ion battery are considered to be safe products.
These battery have failed at a rate of about one in 10 million, according to the certification firm UL.
It was too quick to blame the batteries; I think there was nothing wrong with them or that they were not the main problem,” has declared Park Chul-wan, former director of the Center for Advanced Batteries at the Korea Electronics Technology Institute.
