As Samsung Electronics revealed its record high quarterly operating profit last week, Nokia reported the reduction of its plants in Finland after closing its operations in Germany, Hungary and Romania. Top executives of Research In Motion are leaving the company one after the other as the BlackBerry maker faces a possible hostile takeover.
Nokia was the pride of Finland and RIM was the biggest tech success story of Canada. Since Nokia edged Motorola to become the world’s largest cell phone producer in 1998, it dominated the global mobile handset market for a full decade, grabbing 40 percent in 2008. It paid 1.2 billion euros in taxes in 2007; last year, its corporate taxes amounted to a little over 2 million euros, one-600th of the peak year.
Analysts and consumers now know what were behind Nokia’s steep decline. While the innovative Apple started the mobile phone race and Samsung quickly chased it, Nokia burnished its glory as the largest employer and taxpayer in Finland, expanding into paper and timber businesses. The technological gap was already too big to close when executives watched Steve Jobs make his presentations of the iPhone and iPad.
Samsung Electronics posted 2012 first quarter operating profits of 5.8 trillion won ($5.15 billion) from a total turnover of 45 trillion won, to renew the previous quarterly profit record of 5.3 trillion won in the 4th of 2011. Samsung sold 41 million smartphones from its Galaxy series during the first quarter, compared to Apple’s 32 million sets.
Confidence in a continued surge is being expressed for the next quarter by Samsung executives who also note rosy factors in semiconductor chips, mobile application processors and display screens. People are generally inspired to hear about the good performance of Samsung in the global market even if they own no Samsung shares or have no family member employed by the conglomerate.
Average Koreans identify the prosperity of Samsung with that of their nation, knowing how large a portion of GDP and export figures it is responsible for. Accordingly, they are detested by the reports of any negative happenings such as the recent court disputes involving members of the owner family and are equally disappointed by any signs of over-confidence, audacity and arrogance seen in its corporate executives.
Whenever Samsung reports impressive business figures and Hyundai Motors, LG and SK do the same, Koreans hope that they will not be deceived by their own achievements, seeing the vicissitudes of Nokia and RIM.
