“Taking our customer’s safety as our highest priority, we have decided to halt sales and production of the Galaxy Note 7,” the company said.
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Daniel Kim, an analyst for investment bank Macquarie Group, estimated that the potential losses to the discontinued Galaxy Note 7 could rise to 3.1 trillion Korean won, or $2.8 billion, for the last three months of the year, or enough to wipe out the entire mobile division’s operating profits for the fourth quarter.
South Korea’s finance minister Yoo Il-ho also warned that the halt in sales would negatively impact the country’s export figures – Samsung’s mobile handsets made up about 2% of the Asian economy’s annual total exports.
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