Baek Byung-yeul is a journalist at The Korea Times focused on cultural content, including films and cultural events in South Korea. You can contact him at baekby@koreatimes.co.kr to share your insights.
Samsung apologizes to consumers for Galaxy S22 performance
Han Jong-hee, the vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, speaks during a shareholders' meeting at its headquarters in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, Wednesday. Courtesy of Samsung Electronics
By Baek Byung-yeul
By Baek Byung-yeul
Han Jong-hee, the vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, offered an apology to company shareholders and customers, Wednesday, for a controversy over its game optimizing service (GOS), which adjusts a smartphone's performance when users play games. He vowed to provide customers with the best products and services.
“I would like to apologize again for not understanding consumers' feelings,” the vice chairman said during a meeting with the company's shareholders at its headquarters in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province.
Samsung recently began selling the Galaxy S22, its newest high-end smartphone. But the company has been embroiled in the scandal over the GOS application installed in its Galaxy devices.
Although the company advertised the high performance of its S22 phones, it was confirmed that the GOS application is automatically run in the background to avoid the phones overheating.
The GOS is designed to optimize the performance of Galaxy devices when playing games, but users found that the service cannot be turned off manually, which has resulted in lower quality while playing.
Some of the device's performance test results showed that the S22 devices running the GOS were found to show around half the performance that Samsung had initially advertised. Facing a backlash from consumers, the company provided a software update that does not limit device performance until the phones start to heat up.
“The GOS was designed to optimize smartphone performance by reflecting the various characteristics of games. We decided that consistent performance for a long time is important and tried to minimize heat generation. Many consumers said that they want the best performance from the beginning, so we distributed a software update in the direction of giving users choices,” the vice chairman said.
"We will pay more attention to consumers' voices to prevent such issues from recurring and try to offer the best products and services,” Han added.
Shareholders also raised questions over appointing Roh Tae-moon, the president and head of the company's smartphone business, as a board member. In response to their questions, Han said, “Roh is a manager who has succeeded in the development of the Galaxy S series and foldable smartphones. He is the right person to create new growth opportunities that combine foldables, 5G and AI in the mobile market.”
When asked about how to deal with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Han said, “The product supply to the Russian market has been suspended. We are closely monitoring the situation of economic sanctions on Russia and taking measures to minimize the impact on the company.”
But when asked about the risks the damages to the company because of the Ukraine issue, Han declined to comment, saying only, “We will do our best.”
As a measure to enhance shareholder value, the vice chairman said, “The company will pay dividends of 9.8 trillion won annually.”
Touching on the outlook for the firm's semiconductor business, Kyung Kye-hyun, the president and head of the firm's Device Solutions division, said its chip business division is expected to display over 9-percent growth year-on-year, which exceeds the market average.
Regarding the foundry sector, which Samsung is focusing on, Kyung said, “We are optimizing line operations by improving the yield rate and minimizing wafer losses. We will simultaneously improve profitability and improve supply.”