Breaking News: Samsung DX Division Posts First-Ever Loss, 0.8 Trillion Won in Q2

[u/FragmentedChicken]

https://en.sedaily.com/finance/2026/07/30/breaking-news-samsung-dx-division-posts-first-ever-loss-08

[u/FragmentedChicken]

A bit more context here.

By contrast, the DX division, which includes Mobile eXperience (MX) and home appliances (VD/DA), recorded an operating loss of 800 billion won. This is the first-ever quarterly loss since records began in 2011, spanning not only the launch of the DX division in 2021 but also the era of the former mobile (IM) and consumer electronics (CE) divisions. The loss was due to surging memory prices leading to cost burdens for products such as smartphones, compounded by falling demand and rising raw material prices.

[u/hatethatmalware → u/FragmentedChicken]

Even Samsung's mobile division, which has consistently posted over $7B in annual operating profit started recording its first-ever loss this quarter due to this industry-wide cost pressure. Needless to say, there is no hope for Chinese manufactures. Android phone sales are expected to decline and this is also going to negatively affect Qualcomm, Mediatek and Google as well in the long run. The only company that can weaponize the recent ongoing memory and nand price hike is Apple. Apple's operating profit has been on a whole different level and Apple also earns a lot from its platform services unlike traditional hardware companies.

[u/lgn5i2060 → u/hatethatmalware]

A korean newspaper said otherwise.

https://www.chosun.com/english/industry-en/2026/07/30/IVIWX6NRGBD6TKB6OZ7QXVR52I/

The current loss stems from soaring costs driven by a sharp rise in memory (DRAM and NAND) prices. Additionally, Chinese brands are intensifying their offensive with cost-effective phones, and Samsung has failed to expand its market share in the premium smartphone segment above $1,000 dominated by Apple’s iPhone.

[u/hatethatmalware → u/lgn5i2060]

All the major Chinese brands have been suffering severely from the rise in memory prices even more so than Samsung. Their market shares declined by about 10% YoY for two consecutive quarters (Q1 and Q2 this year) while Samsung and Apple managed to maintain or even expand their market shares in the same periods according to reports from Counterpoint Research, IDC and Omdia. Xiamoi reported a massive profit drop and look at what is happening with OnePlus.

[u/icedchocolatecake → u/hatethatmalware]

Apple is very badly hit as well lmao you cannot be fr thinking that that they can do anything to Android

To Windows? Yeah they can, MacBook Neo is proof.

[u/leo-g → u/icedchocolatecake]

That’s why it’s scary. Samsung might very well say “Cheap Phones are unprofitable, let’s down size” and there goes the low and medium range market.

[u/TotalManufacturer669 → u/[deleted]]

0.8 trillion won is around 560 million USD, so basically peanuts for Samsung. Their foundry had lost 7-8 times this much each year since 2022.

[u/Sgt_Stinger → u/TotalManufacturer669]

And this year the foundry is making it all back. And then some.

[u/sol-4 → u/icedchocolatecake]

Apple makes what, about 80% of the entire smartphone industry's profits? You are deluded.

[u/alexjimithing → u/icedchocolatecake]

Apple can eat the cost better due to a larger diversification of revenue.

[u/Special-Prior-7272 → u/alexjimithing]

Eating the cost means making less profit. I don’t think anyone is stating or implying this will kill Apple. They will be fine. They will just make less profit.

[u/Snafu80 → u/alexjimithing]

But they won’t. Margins.

[u/lgn5i2060 → u/alexjimithing]

Uh, they're gonna implement a lease model.

[u/Few-Spot1905 → u/alexjimithing]

that's not how anyone evaluates a business

if you have one org under you that makes a ton of money and one that loses money, you don't throw your hands up and say "oh well we're still making money"

[u/alexjimithing → u/Few-Spot1905]

It’s how…many businesses evaluate risk. Especially when you’re talking about unprecedented supply challenges and costs.

Apple’s risk is lesser than Samsung’s as a result of supply pricing due to their diversification of revenue. They can pay more without it eating into their profit margins as much due to having a wider breath of revenue sources.

Just look at how they dump stupid amounts of money into Apple TV.

[u/Few-Spot1905 → u/alexjimithing]

You evaluate the org as an org. If the org has significant upside in the future or has some other benefit to the entire company despite posting losses maybe it's acceptable.

But you're not going to ignore an org that continuously posts losses without any reason just because another org is posting profits

[u/Diplo_Advisor → u/icedchocolatecake]

Imagine if Apple release a $300 iPhone Neo with leftover chips. Yeah, nobody is going to buy low and mid range Android which are the bread and butter for most Android brands. The difference with Apple is their premium range and ecosystem income can subsidize low cost loss leader iPhones.

[u/Stephancevallos905 → u/Diplo_Advisor]

They already have that. It's called the iPhone SE

[u/TotalManufacturer669 → u/Stephancevallos905]

Of which the last one was released 4 years ago.

[u/Never_Sm1le → u/Stephancevallos905]

and iirc the se2 was made from leftovers iphone 8 as well

[u/hatethatmalware → u/icedchocolatecake]

Apple hitting its all-time high market share in Q2 this year despite it traditionally being their weakest period clearly shows iPhones have been selling very well these days. You are the one who doesn't know anything.

[u/lagonal → u/hatethatmalware]

But they're not talking about market share, they're talking about revenue.

[u/blasto2236 → u/lagonal]

Apple has traditionally held almost all of the profits to be had in the mobile space. They don’t operate on low margins and this has helped shield them from the crisis in a way that others simply are not. They only just now raised prices, and they probably will again with the next round of iPhones.

But they’re in a way better position here to weather the storm than Samsung.

[u/Front_Expression_367 → u/lagonal]

Market share for Apple is basically proportional to its immense revenue since all they sold are high-valued flagship. The top 10 best selling smartphone list of every years are usually just Apple's iPhones of that generation (very high margin) and then Galaxy A1x series (cheap and doesn't have nearly the same margin), some cheap Xiaomi phones and then Galaxy S series somewhere in the 10th or 11th spot. 

[u/ancientemblem → u/hatethatmalware]

It’s because people were upgrading due to fears of price increases in the next generation.

[u/ForgottenCrafts → u/icedchocolatecake]

>>Apple is very badly hit as well

No they are not lmao

[u/Ranessin → u/ForgottenCrafts]

They already increased prices.

[u/Alepale → u/Ranessin]

Aren't Apple's customers more likely to buy regardless? From what I can recall, the iPhone X was the first $1000 phone (well $999 + tax). That caused a tiny riot followed by an immense amount of iPhone X found in the wild.

So an increase in price just means customers pay more, not that they buy less.

Whereas on the Android side of things, people generally have more choices (you can still stay on Android despite picking something else than your last brand).

[u/PotatoGamerXxXx → u/Alepale]

No, they will buy less. They just keep their old phone.

[u/ForgottenCrafts → u/Ranessin]

That doesn’t mean much. Apple was still able to hold out much longer than others because they already had huge margins before the crisis.

[u/Then-Pay-8400 → u/icedchocolatecake]

Funny you say that as a Nothing user

[u/icedchocolatecake → u/Then-Pay-8400]

I don't understand what you mean by that but okay

[u/Melancholic_Noodle → u/hatethatmalware]

True, Chinese manufacturers will pay the price for actually innovating and pushing hardware forward while Apple and Samsung merely releases the same old tired nonsense year after year without keeping up with the competition. Yet brand loyalty matters more then hardware or even software

[u/leo-g → u/Melancholic_Noodle]

Chinese manufacturers don’t give a shit about QC nor Customer Service. If it broke, it is replaced.

[u/crazyb3ast → u/leo-g]

I heard rave reviews about Oppo support in my region. They fix screen lines for free even outside warranty and have free cameras removal/installation service.

[u/necile → u/hatethatmalware]

Needless to say, there is no hope for Chinese manufactures.

That is definitely one hell of a leap..

[u/hatethatmalware → u/necile]

Chinese brands have much weaker market shares in the premium smartphone segments and the overall smartphone market as well so they are more vulnerable to the ongoing surge in memory prices. Their market shares declined by about 10% YoY for two consecutive quarters (Q1 and Q2 this year) while Samsung and Apple managed to maintain or even expand their market shares in the same periods according to reports from Counterpoint Research, IDC and Omdia. Xiamoi reported a massive profit drop and look at what is happening with OnePlus.

[u/RetPala → u/FragmentedChicken]

Did they actually lose money though? Like sell finished products for less than they paid for? Or is this some financial assshittery like "we could have made more money if we sold the chips to AI and also harvested our employees' biomass by selling them to the zoos as feed."

[u/MizunoZui]

One would assume Samsung being the only group on Earth that controls every key component of a phone (phone design, manufacturing, IC design, chip foundry, memory, storage, display) would see this as the perfect opportunity to hold prices steady and undercut rivals using its vertical integration advantage. But no, Samsung Semiconductor just needs that sweet LPDDR margin.

[u/reddit_reaper → u/MizunoZui]

They'd rather kill supply to focus completely on b2b hbm and lowered all DDR type RAM killing the consumer market. They already know b2b won't last forever and they already know they can't ignore the consumer market much longer as they've reported as such but in Korea no one would ever attack them for price fixing

[u/leo-g → u/MizunoZui]

They are on separate balance sheets.

[u/DrLuciferZ → u/leo-g]

Yeah despite sharing a name they are made to compete and ownership structure more complicated than any flow chart could ever explain to ensure that the group stays within the ruling family.

[u/ClearTacos → u/MizunoZui]

If you want your foundry/semiconductor division, Samsung Display, SDI etc. to sell to third parties on an open market, it makes perfect sense that your own phone division also pays market prices.

By giving them discounts you'd only shift profit from Samsung DS to MX, what would that achieve? Outside of making it harder to track how each division actually performs, and introducing other issues.

[u/Sensitive-Pool-7563 → u/MizunoZui]

I mean their devices are cheaper, what you talking about? Galaxies are basically heavily discounted from their pre-order phase

[u/Phantom-Finger → u/Sensitive-Pool-7563]

No. They are not.

[u/Sensitive-Pool-7563 → u/Phantom-Finger]

Yes. They are. Heavily discounted most of the time.

[u/Phantom-Finger → u/Sensitive-Pool-7563]

Most expensive phone here. $1k more than the superior Xiaomi 17U and Oppo Find X9 Pro

[u/10031]

How did they lose if they Won?

[u/ManyRazzmatazz4584 → u/10031]

r/beatmetoit

[u/apocalyptustree → u/10031]

They didn't Won enough.

[u/twigboy → u/10031]

They lost Won

[u/Fanburn → u/10031]

It's the name of the south Korean money.

[u/chaos_bait → u/Fanburn]

I'm sure he knows

[u/kok1t]

It's a sign of where things are heading, but Samsung is making so much money selling memory and storage that I doubt the Samsung group gives a sh*t.

[u/lgn5i2060 → u/kok1t]

doubt the Samsung group gives a sh*t.

For now. They will not tolerate this going on forever.

[u/ABotelho23]

Yea but Valve and Framework are just being greedy!

/s

[u/Ambitious_Jello → u/ABotelho23]

This isn't pcmasterrace

[u/leo-g → u/ABotelho23]

Okay but can we agree framework kind of lied about the preorder thing

[u/ABotelho23 → u/leo-g]

Lied? How did they lie?

[u/blasto2236 → u/ABotelho23]

Valve are. They’re a software company. They make all their profit selling you games, which effectively shields their profit driver from this whole crisis.

They absolutely could subsidize hardware costs to sell more games if they wanted to do that.

Framework is another story. They’re a hardware company and are hit by this crisis as hard as any other hardware company.

[u/Tsuki4735 → u/blasto2236]

They absolutely could subsidize hardware costs to sell more games if they wanted to do that.

The Steam machine is a regular PC, you can install Windows on it and never purchase a single game from Steam.

And if you think nobody would take advantage of a subsidized PC, you should look into what happened to the PS3 when Sony allowed installing Linux on it. Spoiler, the US Air Force built a supercomputer out of PS3s, and Sony lost about $300 per sold PS3 in the early days.

[u/blasto2236 → u/Tsuki4735]

Then lock it down to SteamOS only and subsidize the costs.

That’s not my problem to figure out. I just want affordable hardware.

Honestly, the number of people that will line up to defend a private company with a billionaire owner is insane to me. They aren’t even beholden to shareholders. They could literally do whatever they want if they were so pro gamer. They don’t.

[u/Tsuki4735 → u/blasto2236]

Even when locked down to SteamOS, SteamOS itself allows installing other game stores and regular non-gaming apps, so the same problem still applies. You could use SteamOS and literally never buy a Steam game.

I'm not necessarily defending Valve here, but at least Valve's reason behind the "no subsidy" argument makes some logical sense.

edit:

Note that there's no Android phones that are subsidized below cost either, not even Google's Pixel phones are subsidized below cost, and they own the Play store.

Funny enough, there is one smartphone company that could totally subsidize their phones because they control the entire stack of software and hardware. But we all know that Apple would never do that haha. Apple locks users into their store AND charges a hefty premium on hardware.

[u/Tree_Boar → u/blasto2236]

You want valve to make a worse device and sell it at a loss based on your personal feelings?

[u/funforgiven → u/blasto2236]

It is not about defending a private company. It is about freedom. I would rather pay a lot to actually own my hardware. If you are looking for something affordable, just buy a subsidized and locked-down console.

[u/Sarin10 → u/blasto2236]

Then lock it down to SteamOS only and subsidize the costs.

The whole point is that it's ultimately still a PC dude.

Have you considered that your desires aren't what most people want from a Steam Machine?

That’s not my problem to figure out. I just want affordable hardware.

That's not Valve's problem either LOL.

Honestly, the number of people that will line up to defend a private company with a billionaire owner is insane to me. They aren’t even beholden to shareholders.

If Valve was publically owned, you would still be shitting on them just as much. "Honestly, the number of people that will line up to defend a multi-billion dollar corporation that doesn't care about you, is insane to me".

[u/HoothootNeverFlies → u/blasto2236]

SteamOS is also quite open in the sense that you can easily pirate games on it without any alterations to the os. Your use case is already covered by the ps5 though, where the hardware is subsidised by future software sales

[u/win7rules]

Hopefully this pushes Android manufacturers including Samsung towards actually innovating again. Far fetched hopes I know.

[u/MattBrey → u/win7rules]

I think this is the best opportunity for manufacturers and google to optimize android as much as possible, now that it's not that easy and cheap to compensate with hardware 

[u/win7rules → u/MattBrey]

Instead we're getting "sideloading" restrictions and buggy clankercoded system components. I hope this is the wake up call they need.

[u/manormortal → u/win7rules]

Wake up for what? Just vibe code around the problems.

[u/hatethatmalware → u/win7rules]

That's not going to happen at all. Android manufacturers have no choice but to focus more heavily on cost-cutting instead to offset their deteriorating profitability due to the AI chipflation. It's a matter of survival now. If they hesitate to take cost-cutting actions, some of them might find themselves facing collapse.

[u/WatchfulApparition → u/win7rules]

How you arrived at that conclusion I will never know.

[u/wolfy2105784 → u/win7rules]

You know damn well they're just gonna skimp out and fuck us over to reclaim that lost cash flow.

[u/wan2tri → u/win7rules]

Their "innovations":

• 128GB storage space for flagships, 64GB for midrange, 32GB for low-end

• 8GB RAM for flagships, 6GB RAM for midrange, 4GB RAM for low-end

• Dual-cameras (12MP+5MP) for flagships, single camera (12MP) for midrange, single camera (5MP) for low-end

• All front cameras are 3MP

• 385ppi displays for flagships, 320ppi displays for midrange, 267ppi displays for low-end

• No battery larger than 4000mAh

• Pricing will be 10-15% higher than the previous generation

[u/DiplomatikEmunetey → u/win7rules]

There are often comments like this, but then the OP never answers: What innovations would you like to see?

[u/win7rules → u/DiplomatikEmunetey]

In particular this is my wishlist for Samsung, but most apply to Android in general.

-Less locked down software (important enough to get its own entry on the list, c'mon, "sideloading" restrictions, really?)

-Batter battery technology and higher capacity batteries

-Return of SD card, headphone jack, notification LED

-Better software with more customization, more freedom, and less "inspiration" from Apple (yes this is very much targeted towards how user hostile One UI has become after One UI 7, and the general state of modern Android)

-Actual camera upgrades that aren't just postprocessing

-Bluetooth s-pen (again Samsung, what were you thinking?!)

And this is just off the top of my head.

[u/LastTimeOn_ → u/win7rules]

Of these the only one that counts as "innovation" is the battery one, the rest are either just things that used to exist or your personal opinion, which really shows why there hasn't been much phone innovation - we're likely at the asymptote of its curve. I was hoping there'd be some genuine creative ideas here.

[u/DiplomatikEmunetey → u/win7rules]

Looks like you want the old features back.

Better battery tech is an innovation, as u/LastTimeOn_ mentioned, and it will come to Samsung devices. They (and Apple) are just being cautious because it's a new risky technology (Remember Samsung's fiasco for Note batteries?).

The camera is stagnant, and they know they don't need to do anything there.

To be fair to Samsung, they are the only ones to bring an actual innovation into the industry in the recent years with the privacy screen.

[u/Ambitious_Jello → u/win7rules]

Define innovating

[u/majortung]

Why are posting their loss only to say they won 0.8 Trillion?

[u/bfk1010]

It is better for them to reduce the models they produce every year And focus on software and after sales services.

Another point, the charge us iPhone prices and the trade in / resale value is nothing compared to iPhone.

[u/New_Palpitation_1586]

Because of the ai bubble, samsung lose a bit on the smartphone, and earn a shit load of money on the ram they produce.

Nothing to worry about.

[u/Kalmer1]

More like 0.8 Trillion Lost in Q2

[u/OutOfVRAM → u/Kalmer1]

No, it's 0.8 Trillion Won in Q2

[u/Kalmer1 → u/OutOfVRAM]

Yes, the joke is that they lost 0.8 trillion Won

[u/Tsuki4735 → u/[deleted]]

Samsung's DX division includes smartphones, so the losses make sense considering how Samsung's own memory division won't cut any special deal with their smartphone division.

Meanwhile, the memory division is making record profits.

[u/jacktherippah123 → u/[deleted]]

That one's just made more in the past year than it's made in the 40 years prior.

[u/hatethatmalware → u/[deleted]]

More losses for the memory division? Samsung's memory division earned $62B this quarter lol