Less than one week after the launch, reports of Galaxy Note 7 explosions started surfacing the entire market. The company initially blamed the defective batteries manufactured by its Chinese supplier but on September 2, the company announced a global recall of 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 models with a promise to replace the devices.
During the entire period, the company remained unable to find the perfect reason that caused the batteries to explode. Even with acclaimed safe batteries purchased from a different supplier by the company were also reported to be catching fire. This forced the company to finally end the sales of Galaxy Note 7.
Some reports indicated that batteries in Note 7 were pinched causing short circuits and overheating leaving owners with burns. But a recent investigation by Samsung electronics Co Ltd has revealed that the battery in Galaxy Note 7 smartphones was the main reason for explosions.
Now while preparing for the launch of Galaxy S8, Samsung wants to put behind its biggest product safety failures in the tech history. The company plans to launch the product in sometimes the first half of this year. According to market analysts, it is very important for Samsung to regain customer’s trust by first giving a detailed explanation of what actually went wrong in the case of Galaxy Note 7. The company will have to make its customers believe that such incidents won’t occur with the upcoming device.
The final results of the investigation being carried out on this issue are likely to be announced on January 23. Along with the results, some of the new measures that the firm would be taking in order to prevent similar issues with its future devices will also be announced by the head of Samsung’s mobile business Koh Dong-jin.
According to IDC’s Ma, considering the reason of explosions a supplier issue is very surprising. The batteries in actual were not given enough space to swell and relax in a natural manner. The company claimed that it will examine all aspects of its device in October. The examination would include both hardware and software design and will also be hiring third-party firms as a part of the investigation. But the reports state that the cause for the fires remained unexplained by hardware design or software related matters.
The success of Samsung’s smartphones this year is still not clear but the revenues are expected to increase due to the rising memory chip prices and increased sales of organic light-emitting diode screens for the upcoming smartphones. But no matter what happens, in order to reestablish or establish a sustainable organizational resilience and trust Samsung will have to take a serious look at its safety and quality risk management programs.