SEOUL, South Korea - After the exploding battery controversy, the company is now presenting Korean customers a low-priced upgrade to a new Note or S8 with a discount on the Samsung Note 7 line.
The customers in Korea are the first to receive an S7 Edge or S7 smartphone to replace the faulty Samsung Note 7 unit. Right now, there are multiple lawsuits hounding the tech giant company Samsung, since both the United States and Korea are severely affected by the recall of the Samsung Note 7 phone.
Since Samsung has its headquarters located in South Korea, it makes sense that the company will be starting to make amends there before anywhere else. Since August, Samsung has stopped the manufacturing of the Samsung Note 7 smartphone due to battery malfunctions that led to explosions and fires.
One report confirmed that a Southwest Airlines flight has caught fire due to an exploding Samsung Note 7 unit. All the top US carriers T-mobile, Verizon, and AT&T have announced that they would stop the replacement of the Samsung Note 7 smartphone.
Samsung has already recalled around 1 million units of the Samsung Note 7 which is in line with their statement to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. Related recalls were also made in other countries like Canada.
"Samsung is doing what's needed here by containing the damage to the Note 7 before consumer fear spreads to other Samsung products," said Bryan Ma, vice president for devices research at IDC.
Ma added that killing such an otherwise-promising product line is painful but perhaps necessary for the long-term health of Samsung company. Moreover, Ma also said that Samsung Note 7 users that want to stick to Android have plenty of other Android flagships to choose from, be it from LG, HTC, Sony, Huawei, or even Google's recently launched Pixels.
Samsung, which is considered to be one of the world's top smartphone makers, has already given financial inducement to customers in South Korea which has an amount of $88.39 (around 100,000 won).
Samsung Note 7's current collapse has already cost the company around $5.4 billion won in profits which put them in the red for the third quarter of 2016 and the first quarter of next year.
