The Chosun Ilbo, one of the leading newspapers in South Korea, reported that Samsung has deployed hundreds of staff to find the cause of the fire hazard. Not content, the Korean chip giant is also availing the services of Swiss quality certification company SGS and other outside experts.
In early September, Samsung announced a global recall of 2.5 million Note 7 phones, blaming the action on faulty batteries. This was followed by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission formally recalling about 1 million Note 7 phones in the United States. However, with even replacements catching fire, Samsung was left with no option but halt sales and exchanges of the device globally.
The frantic steps reflect the company's realization that the recall has impacted confidence in its whole Galaxy range of products. This has prompted the company to initiate actions on a war footing.
The company is reportedly investigating the entire manufacturing process and how users handle the phone to unearth issues, if any, with actions such uploading videos, photos or any other content.
An undesirable offshoot of this damage control exercise could be delay in the launch of the next iteration of Galaxy Note, namely the Galaxy S8 smartphone. This was originally scheduled to launch in early 2017. If Samsung is unable to extricate itself from this mess sooner rather than later, it could give Apple Inc. AAPL further inroads into the highly competitive smartphone market.
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