Samsung’s announcement that it would halt production of its Galaxy Note 7 drew much discussion on Chinese social media, and netizens did not hold back with their opinions.
Samsung decided to temporarily halt production of the Note 7 after new reports emerged which said that the Note 7 replacement phones – the ones that the company had already sent as replacements for explosive phones – caught fire again. South Korea’s largest news agency, Yonhap News Agency, broke the news on Monday.
Yonhap reported that it was a co-decision made by Samsung, alongside the authorities of South Korea, America and China. Samsung China said they had not received any notice regarding this matter from Samsung.
Samsung launched the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone in August. The smartphone was seen as the most competitive rival of Apple’s iPhone 7. A month later, as many as 2.5 million Note 7 smartphones worldwide were recalled by Samsung because of many incidents where the smartphones spontaneously exploded or caught fire.
Samsung encouraged the Note 7 users to swap their smartphones with replacement phones that the company claimed were safe. However, there have been reports recently that even the new “safe” smartphones were catching on fire again in America and Taiwan.
In view of the everlasting accidents, AT&T and T- Mobile, two major wireless carriers in America, have halted both sales and replacements of the Note 7s. Currently, the smartphone is still on the shelf at Samsung China’s online store.
The news of the production halt has drawn Chinese netizens’ discussion on China’s largest social network, Weibo, and on another leading social media platform, Zhihu. AllChinaTech has handpicked some of the more interesting comments.
“Samsung had better stop completely the production (of the Note 7) to avoid embarrassing itself one more time.”
–WMeng90
“Come on! Produce more (Note 7s). The South Korean army has run out of grenades.”
–Lilun
“Nokia ended itself because of its conservatism, while Samsung will end itself because of its new products.”
–Wusheng
“The Samsung Empire won’t crumble to dust because of this, since the company has the most comprehensive smartphone industry chain, and its businesses are in multiple industries. But this will definitely peel off its skin. The direct economic losses at tens of billions of RMB are still not the major problem. The biggest problem will be Samsung’s losses in the capital market and in brand value, especially once Chinese consumers get the impression that the company treats them worse than other customers, and that its products are unreliable.”
–Jiaye
(Top photo from Mydrivers.com)
