After weeks of controversy surrounding its Galaxy Note 7, South Korean multinational conglomerate company Samsung has officially pulled the plug on the smartphone.
The premium flagship phone, which was launched in August this year to much fanfare, received highly positive reviews. However, in just a matter of weeks after its release, reports of the Note 7 catching fire began to surface. The cause of the fire is believed to have been due to its defective batteries, which causes the phone to overheat.
It became a global disaster.
Various airlines including Philippines’ Cebu Pacific, Singapore Airlines, and Australia’s Qantas, Virgin Australia, AirAsia, and AirAsiaX banned the usage and charging of the device onboard all flights until further notice. Some of the world’s largest cruise lines including Carnival and Royal Caribbean International, Costa Cruises, Celebrity Cruises, Princess Cruises, Seabourn Cruise Line, CDF Croisieres de France, and Disney Cruise Line also imposed a ban on the Note 7.
On 2nd September, Samsung issued a recall of the original device and began shipping out replacement Note 7s. However, those too proved to be a fire risk when several replacement Note 7s spontaneously caught fire. Following which, the company immediately made a global call for all carrier and retail partners to stop sales and exchanges of the phone, and advised all consumers of either the original Note 7 or supposedly safe replacement Note 7 to power down and stop using the device.
Samsung also announced that they were ceasing production of the phone temporarily while they carry out investigations on the glitchy device.
And now, barely 24 hours after the worldwide recall was issued, the beleaguered Note 7 is permanently discontinued. Taken off the product range. Gone. Dead. In an official statement, Samsung said, “Taking our customer’s safety as our highest priority, we have decided to halt sales and production of the Galaxy Note 7.”
It is a hard pill to swallow, coupled with the fact that this is happening on the day the company is seeing its biggest one-day decline in shares in 8 years. Furthermore, Samsung’s global recall of 2.5 million Note 7s could end up costing as much as USD17 billion, according to analysts.
But it had to be done.
And whether or not this will affect the Note 7’s would be successor (Note 8?) or put consumers off the brand completely remains to be seen.
UPDATE (12th October 2016, 12pm):
Galaxy Note 7 owners in Malaysia, listen up!
Samsung Malaysia Electronics (SME) Sdn Bhd is offering the option of refund or exchange to the Samsung Galaxy S7edge for the pre-order owners provided that they return their current Samsung Galaxy Note 7 accordingly. The pre-order owners will expect to be contacted from 13th October 2016 onwards by Samsung Customer Service, related mobile network operators or participating retail partners respectively on the details of the refund or exchange program.
For further inquiries, contact Samsung Malaysia’s Careline at 1-800-88-7799.
Sources: WSJ, International Business Times, The Verge, CNN Money.
