Samsung’s quarterly profit more than halved after a global industry downturn and trade tensions hammered demand for its chips and high-end smartphones, according to Bloomberg.
Korea’s largest company reported a less-than-expected 56% fall in operating income to about 6.5 trillion won ($5.6 billion) in the June quarter, but that was helped by an unspecified one-time gain from a customer that analysts estimate could have topped $800 million. The company won’t provide net income or break out divisional performance until it discloses final results toward the end of the month. Its shares slid 0.8% in Seoul.
Samsung is grappling with plateauing demand in the face of an economic slowdown. Its memory chips remain a barometer for everything from computers to smartphones and have been one of the hardest-hit components since Trump administration tariffs took effect in May. Jitters over Samsung’s biggest cash cow grew this week when Japan slapped export restrictions on materials needed for display and chip production, potentially hammering also rival SK Hynix.
Unpredictability surrounding the trade war between the U.S. and China, has sustained a downturn in the chip industry as smartphone demand tapers off and the pace of datacenter construction decelerates. Micron, the largest U.S. maker of computer memory chips, said last week it intended to “meaningfully“ reduce its spending in its fiscal year 2020, on top of plans to idle 5% of production of memory chips in the last quarter.
In the second quarter, contract prices for 32-gigabyte DRAM server modules fell 19.3% compared to the previous quarter while those for 128 gigabit MLC NAND flash memory chips skidded 5%, according to inSpectrum Tech. DRAM price drops are projected to widen to up to 15% in the current quarter and as much as 10% in the fourth quarter, TrendForce has estimated.
Automated systems and bots now generate more than half of internet traffic, forcing hosting companies to manage performance, security, and infrastructure costs at the same time. Ivan Čačija argues that business users are no longer buying only storage and computing resources, but the availability and performance of their own operations. AI will reshape both data-centre management and infrastructure requirements, while regional providers can compete through local presence, predictable costs and hybrid models. Fastserver sees its partnership with Blackwall as part of a broader shift towards an integrated platform combining infrastructure, security, traffic protection and automation.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has unveiled comprehensive plans to restrict children’s access to social media platforms through the proposed EU Kids Act.
Ericsson Nikola Tesla no longer views artificial intelligence solely as a tool that helps developers write code, but as part of the entire software development lifecycle. At the upcoming ENT Technology Days, taking place from 21 to 25 September, artificial intelligence will also be among the central topics.
Siniša Krajnović, PhD, President of the Management Board of ENT, sees the transformation brought about by artificial intelligence through products, internal processes, and changes in the way work itself is performed, while Jelena Jurišić, Director of Technology of the ENT Group (CTO), explains how specialized AI agents are now part of analysis, design, implementation, testing, and verification. In such a model, autonomy increases gradually, with quality control and human decision-making at critical points. At the same time, the change does not diminish the importance of engineers, but increasingly shifts their role toward architecture, domain understanding, and the management of complex automated systems.
