Slumping

Smartphone shipments are off to a rocky start in China with a drop of 7% in the first six weeks of 2024. The latest Counterpoint Research report shows double-digit declines in shipments across the board for the January 1 to February 11 period compared to last year. Low consumer confidence and the lack of upcoming high-profile launches as the two main reasons behind the disappointing start to the year. Oppo saw its shipment shares drop by 29% while Apple’s shipments were down 24% compared to last year. In Apple’s case,…

What had increasingly felt like an inevitability in recent weeks became reality Sunday.The Dodgers optioned struggling rookie Miguel Vargas to triple-A Oklahoma City, after he entered the All-Star break batting .195 and in the midst of a five for 63 slump.Now, they’ll have to reevaluate exactly who to play at second base in his absence, facing a key roster question less than a month from Major League Baseball’s Aug. 1 trade deadline.Vargas’ demotion wasn’t much of a surprise.Despite arriving in the major leagues last…

SEOUL— Samsung Electronics Co. said it expects its fourth-quarter profit to plunge as the firm’s mainstay memory-chip and smartphone businesses face a sharp pullback in demand, showing the extent of the global tech downturn after pandemic highs.The South Korean tech giant on Friday forecast its operating profit in the quarter ended Dec. 31 to drop by 69% from the prior year to 4.3 trillion won, the rough equivalent of $3.4 billion. Revenue for the October-December quarter is expected to…

Switch scrapes into No.1 spot despite industry sales decline According to reports from the number crunchers over at market study groups GfK and GSD, 2022 was a tougher year than usual for UK gaming retailers, with a drop in the sales of both consoles and games when compared to 2021. Over the course of the year, some 34.2 million games were sold to UK players. While that number is not to be sniffed at, it represents a 6% drop on 2021. 20 million of these sales were digital, for a loss of 3.4% over 2021, while the…

Samsung’s estimated results were far below market forecasts. Photo: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg News…

Beyond Meat Inc. BYND -1.26% was moving into its new 300,000-square-foot headquarters in the Los Angeles area last month when it laid off about one-fifth of its workforce, the second round this year. Ethan Brown, the company’s chief executive and founder, assured employees at a town hall a day later that a more focused version of his plant-based food company would thrive. He compared Beyond to Starbucks Corp.…

Real-estate company Redfin Corp. laid off 13% of its staff on Wednesday and closed its home-flipping unit, saying the operation was both too expensive and too risky to continue. The Seattle-based company, which operates a real-estate brokerage and home-listings website, said the decisions were made because it is predicting that the real-estate market is going to be smaller next year and its home-flipping business is losing money. It previously laid off 8% of its workforce in June of this year.…

Not every truism is true, but there’s one for the ad industry that is pretty truthy: When the economy goes south, the ad market is the first thing to go. The idea behind this one is pretty straightforward. If a company needs to cut costs, it’s much easier to get rid of ad budgets than anything else, like workers. So people in media have been trained to expect ad dollars to disappear in the wake of economic shocks. See, for instance, the Great Recession of 2008, when ad spending dropped by double digits in the following…

Economic challenges are forcing consumers to rethink purchasing decisions. Consumers are now more likely to go for low-end or high-end devices, causing a demand gap for mid-range devices. SEE: As smartphone production volume drops, Samsung overtakes AppleThe iPhone SE (3rd Gen), Galaxy A53 and Galaxy 33 models performed poorer than expected because the consumer base that would typically consider buying devices between $250 and $600 are forced to consider cheaper options due to financial pressures, said Canalys…

Economic challenges are forcing consumers to rethink purchasing decisions. Consumers are now more likely to go for low-end or high-end devices, causing a demand gap for mid-range devices. SEE: As smartphone production volume drops, Samsung overtakes AppleThe iPhone SE (3rd Gen), Galaxy A53 and Galaxy 33 models performed poorer than expected because the consumer base that would typically consider buying devices between $250 and $600 are forced to consider cheaper options due to financial pressures, said Canalys…