Samsung halts production of exploding phone due to explosions

Say goodbye to the Samsung Galaxy Note 7.
 
Or better yet … just say, boom!

The phones have a tendency to catch fire and explode.

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Samsung tried to fix the problem. But it didn't work.

So the South Korean tech giant is ending all production of its popular smartphone.

“This is the end,” a Samsung spokesman told NPR's Elise Hu.

It's a bad day for the brand. The decision to halt production is a sign the company is trying to protect its reputation, but brand experts believe the move is going poorly.

“If it’s once, it could be taken as a mistake. But for Samsung, the same thing happened twice with the same model so there’s going to be a considerable loss of consumer faith,” Greg Roh at HMC Investment Securities told The Guardian. “The reason consumers prefer brands like Samsung and Apple is because of product reliability … so in this case brand damage is inevitable and it will be costly for Samsung to turn that around again.”

And it might get worse, because Samsung is also fighting Apple over their claim that Samsung essentially stole their smartphone design.

“When it rains it pours,” BuzzFeed technology reporter Alex Kantrowitz tells The World. “Samsung, in 2011, was ordered to pay Apple $548 million for ripping off Apple’s grid icon design and their rectangular face with rounded corners.”

But here is where Samsung is trying to fight. “Samsung is arguing, ‘Look, we maybe copied a bit of it. But we shouldn’t be responsible for handing over all of our profits. That’s like saying if a carmaker copied a cupholder they’d have to hand over all the profits of the car,'" Kantrowitz explains. "So we’ll see what the Supreme Court says.”

Despite the setback, Kantrowitz believes the company remains strong. “This is going to hurt Samsung, but it’s not a fatal blow. They have a very strong components business. I don’t think you’re going to see them give up on the smartphone.”