Bloomberg is reporting that Samsung has embarked on a round of redundancies in New Zealand, Australia and South-East Asia, in order to eliminate thousands of jobs.
Microsoft-owned LinkedIn lists 141 Samsung New Zealand members, with the company said to have 200-500 employees. Interest.co.nz has sought comment from Samsung New Zealand and will update thIS story when it's available.
Head of brand marketing at Samsung New Zealand, Simon Smith, confirmed there will be redundancies.
“Samsung New Zealand is currently adjusting its workforce for operational efficiency," Smith said.
The reason for the job cuts which could reach 10% of the workforces in the affected markets is Samsung falling behind in the race to make hardware for artificial intelligence (AI).
Samsung has not kept pace with rival semiconductor maker SK Hynix, also headquartered in South Korea, in producing high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips used with Nvidia's AI accelerators to train large language models.
Furthermore, Samsung has not been successful in the foundry business, like TSMC, which makes Apple's in-house designed chipsets, has.
However, the company has this year launched a comprehensive range of smartphones, tablets, laptops, earbuds, watches and the Galaxy Ring wearable, which the Korean tech giant says supports on-device, local AI.
Samsung isn't planning on laying off staff in its home market of South Korea.
The Korean company has seen its share price sag considerably this year, as it struggles to become an AI player, like Microsoft which has successfully pivoted towards the technology, making it the centre piece of its product offerings.
It follows the waning fortunes of one of the oldest semiconductor makers in the world, Intel in the United States, which intends to cut 15,000 jobs and find US$10 billion cost savings as its business falters due to the lack of competitive AI hardware.
Update with comment from Samsung New Zealand.
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