Samsung to release report on Galaxy Note 7 fire incidents

The company is expected to make public the conclusions of the report — carried out by American technological security consulting firm UL — in a press conference on Monday by its mobile division head Koh Dong-jin, Efe news reported. Some media have speculated that the problem may lie in a glitch in the inspection process of phone batteries before they are assembled into the phones, something that has not been confirmed by the firm yet. With the report, the South Korean giant hopes to regain consumer trust and overcome the crisis which forced the withdrawal of its high-end phablet from markets globally. Samsung announced a massive global replacement of the Note 7 in September, shortly after the model’s release, following several reported cases of devices catching fire. In October, the company announced that it would recall the model over the persisting issues. The fiasco led to a 30 per cent year-on-year fall in the firm’s operating profits during the third quarter of last year, to 5.2 trillion won ($4 billion). On Tuesday, Samsung Electronics is scheduled to release its results for the last quarter of 2016, for which company forecasts point to a notable recovery in operating profits thanks to higher sales of chips and monitors. The conglomerate has also been embroiled in the wide-ranging political corruption scandal, owing to the suspected involvement of its heir and de facto leader Lee Jae-yong. Prosecutors have sought Lee’s arrest as a bribery suspect due to large donations allegedly made by Samsung to organisations linked to Choi Soon-sil, the woman at the centre of the scandal, in exchange for favours. IANS