SEOUL, KOREA - Samsung Electronics announced on August 1 a major organizational change by newly establishing a Tablet Group within the IT and Mobile Division in response to the poor financial performance in the second quarter that fell far short of the 8-trillion-won level for eight quarters since the second quarter of 2012. The company said it created the tablet unit in efforts to improve the profitability of the whole division.

 

In addition, it disbanded the product planning team under the supervision of the product strategy section within the IT and mobile division and reassigned the employees of the team to the product strategy section.

 

As the new team leader of the product strategy section, Noh Tae-mun, former head and vice president of the product planning team, has been appointed. Mr. Noh was responsible for developing Samsung's major smartphone models such as the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 2. Vice president Hong Won-hoon, the former section leader, will from now on be responsible for the mobile business team only.

 

On July 31 when the company announced its second-quarter financial results including the operating profit of 7,187.3 billion won, about 10 billion won lower than expected earlier on the sales revenue of 52,353.2 billion won, analysts began talking about the company's impending measures for a downsizing or a major reshuffling in order to overcome the "crisis."