Samsung Workers in Vietnam Bear Brunt of Slowdown in Global Demand for Electronics

Samsung has scaled back production at its massive smartphone plant in Vietnam, employees say, as retailers and warehouses grapple with rising inventory amid a global fall in consumer spending. From a report: America's largest warehouse market is full and major U.S. retailers such as Best Buy and Target warn of slowing sales as shoppers tighten their belts after early COVID-era spending binges. The effect is acutely felt in Vietnam's northern province of Thai Nguyen, one of Samsung's two mobile manufacturing bases in the country where the world's largest smartphone vendor churns out half of its phone output, according to the Vietnam government.

Samsung, which shipped around 270 million smartphones in 2021, says the campus has the capacity to make around 100 million devices a year, according to its website. "We are going to work just three days per week, some lines are adjusting to a four-day workweek instead of six before, and of course no overtime is needed," Pham Thi Thuong, a 28-year-old worker at the plant told Reuters. "Business activities were even more robust during this time last year when the COVID-19 outbreak was at its peak. It's so tepid now."

Rules for working in big companies, part 15

[TechyImmigrant]

Never work in a foreign outpost of an international company.
Those sites are always first in line for layoffs and closures.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

"Vietnam's economy [wikipedia.org] relies largely on foreign direct investment to attract the capital from overseas to support its continual economic rigor" ... most of the high-paying jobs are going to be from foreign companies.

Sign of a slowing global economy

[TomGreenhaw]

With a post covid inflation spike a mild recession is preferable to runaway inflation.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

With a post covid inflation spike a mild recession is preferable to runaway inflation.

Recession, inflation... either way people can't afford shit because they don't have enough money to buy it. Not reallocating money to where it's needed just means a deeper and longer recession.

Re:Sign of a slowing global economy

[TomGreenhaw]

"reallocating money " sounds like somebody taking my hard earned savings without my consent. Reallocating money sounds very much like tax increases that impedes business growth and that means a deeper and longer recession.

Recessions and inflation are not the same thing. Inflation hurts everyone. If you have a good job with steady income, a recession doesn't really inflict much pain at all.

The biggest impact of inflation is destruction of retirement savings, although a recession can also impact 401K returns if you use the stock market.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

"reallocating money " sounds like somebody taking my hard earned savings without my consent. Reallocating money sounds very much like tax increases that impedes business growth and that means a deeper and longer recession.

The wealthy have been buying legislation that lets them transfer all the wealth into their pockets for decades. Fuck those thieving fucks. And fuck you too if you're one of them. If you're just one of the regular middle class then you're getting fucked too, and if you're against taking the money away from the people who have been sacking the coffers and giving it back to the people who need it then you're part of the problem and nobody needs to hear your whining. Everyone who the wealthy have convinced that

Re:

[drinkypoo]

So who is going to reallocate the money? The federal government. These are the same people who messed it all up (according to wannabe socialists like you). And you want to give them MORE power.

That is a stupid and wrong or more likely disingenuous interpretation. I want them to use the power they already have in different ways.

Republicans want to give them LESS power because they also realize that the government messes things up.

Republicans mess it up on purpose to support their argument. That problem isn't with government, it's with republicans.

Overrated is the sign of a won argument

[drinkypoo]

If someone had a real argument against what I'm saying... they'd post it

Thanks for the validation, chuckles

Re:Sign of a slowing global economy

[jacks smirking reven]

"reallocating money " sounds like somebody taking my hard earned savings without my consent.

You do consent though, paying taxes is part of the societal buy-in and we all get to vote for the people who decide what those taxes should be.

It's entirely possible to live your life in a way where you pay $0 in tax. In the USA I can tell you a way to not pay any of the various taxes we have. You may have to live a vastly different life than what you are used to but them's just the breaks on that.

Re:

[roman_mir]

No, you don't consent, you are born into tax and inflation and war slavery that is forced upon you by someone that was there before you were born, that is what it is.

Re:

[OrangeTide]

sounds like somebody taking my hard earned savings without my consent.

It's not your money, it's your government's. At least that's how they see it. And those with the most money get to decide for the rest of us how it will function. How democratic (?)

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not your money, it's your government's. At least that's how they see it. And those with the most money get to decide for the rest of us how it will function. How democratic (?)

You make a very interesting point. About 2000 years ago a certain prophet / teacher was asked about paying taxes, and he answered by asking "who was depicted on the coins". Caesar of course.

Re:

[cayenne8]

With a post covid inflation spike a mild recession is preferable to runaway inflation.

But, remember, we are NOT in a recession...per the Biden administration's new definition of the week.

We're not really

[rsilvergun]

we're in something totally new. Less growth yes but hiring hasn't slowed (despite all the press about job cuts). The economy is still, despite our Federal Reserve's best efforts, doing pretty well. And of course corporate profits are at record highs, largely due to profiteering after 4 decades of M&A.

By a childishly simplistic and not at all useful metric we are "in a recession" but by every other metric we're not. It's almost as if a global pandemic that shut down the world followed by nearly turni

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

nearly turning into a dictatorship

The libertarian's idea of a dictatorship, just like Trump is a dumb person's idea of a smart person, or Sweden is a right-winger's idea of socialism.

Re:

[fuzznutz]

But, remember, we are NOT in a recession...per the Biden administration's new definition of the week.

C'mon man. We just don't know what a recession is. I'm not not economist.

Re:

[radarskiy]

"new definition of the week"

Sure, if by "new definiton" you mean "business cycle dating criteria that NBER has maintained for decades".

What are we getting that is new?

[jellomizer]

I have a Samsung S20, it is 2 years old now, and I have no intentions to upgrade it, because the new phones while having a faster CPU, (my current CPU is still fast enough to do what I need), higher quality camera (which I don't take to many pictures with and I am not a photographer so even with a better camera what I do take will suck), a higher resolution screen where I haven't been able to see pixels on my phone sense the iPhone 4. Ill upgrade when my phone dies or the battery wont last long enough.

I think that is true for a lot of folks now. Kids today are no longer as interested in getting the newest phones either, nor are adults willing to show off their cool new devices to everyone. It is no longer a status symbol.

However, this also hearkens back to around 2003, the bit Y2K upgrade has been completed, and a lot of industries had just finished upgrading their systems from the old Mainframes to newer PC hardware based servers, or more modern microcomputers, with all the new software was coded to work for them. So the Tech bubble popped, where a lot of Coders and other IT folks got the shaft for about 5 years, where companies then needed to consider upgrading again.

Re:

[Ostracus]

I wouldn't upgrade either, but with manufacturers bloating their phones over times, as well as apps getting bigger, one needs to upgrade just to get any use out of the device.

Re:

[tsqr]

Ill upgrade when my phone dies or the battery wont last long enough.

A weak battery in a phone that does not have a user-replaceable battery can be replaced by a place like UBreakiFix, for less than 20% of the cost of a new flagship phone. Been there, done that.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

A weak battery in a phone that does not have a user-replaceable battery can be replaced by a place like UBreakiFix, for less than 20% of the cost of a new flagship phone. Been there, done that.

I haven't seen a phone with a non-user replaceable battery. All the phones I've seen have batteries that can be changed by the user, it just requires the user to not be completely inept and actually have a few brain cells and a little bit of skill and knowledge in using basic tools.

Granted, some phones are harder than

Re:

[stabiesoft]

I consider a 2 year old phone new. Mine is 4 1/2 and have no plans to upgrade. It does 4G and that is good enough for me. It is a moto Z and I have the battery pack module and still get 2 days use between charges so battery life is still more than acceptable.

Is it the economy or is the market just saturated?

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

We're at a point now where premium cell phones are selling for US$1,000 or more. Even though the manufacturers excrete new versions every year, there hasn't been much in the way of significant innovation in a while. It's just been a parade of small incremental improvements in speed and the addition of fancy cameras. If it wasn't for planned obsolescence because of non-replaceable batteries or due to companies limiting the years of operating system support, I'd probably be using the same phone I had 5 years ago.

About time

[aaarrrgggh]

The cell phone ecosystem is really stupid and is in need of some kind of paridgm shift. I use my phone a lot, and after three years it is really time to upgrade... but I was out of the country last month and used my old one, an iPhone X, (primarily) as a hotspot with local SIM card. Good enough was really the mantra.

I would love for my next phone to be a cheap, small dumb phone that makes a great hotspot for my tablet. Sure, the cheapest phone is the one you own, so maybe that is enough.

But nothing is in stock

[RobinH]

Try to source semiconductor components and you get lead times of 52 weeks or more. There are high school robotics competitions at risk of being scaled down or cancelled next year because suppliers can't get parts. Automotive manufacturers still have hundreds of thousands of vehicles sitting there waiting for chips to arrive.

Re:

[WierdUncle]

Try to source semiconductor components and you get lead times of 52 weeks or more.

Exactly. What is going on here? If there is a slowdown in global demand for electronics, then you would expect a surplus of components, not a shortage.

This morning, I did a search for USB hub chips on one of my favourite component distributor websites. I got a list of 30 devices that met my technical requirements, but only one was in stock. This kind of thing has been happening more often these days. My old procedure for designing in a new device was to get a candidate list based on a technical spec, then s

Re:

[RobinH]

I understand the automotive chip shortages because the fabs removed some of their older technology node equipment when the orders were initially cancelled in early 2020, and now they just can't catch up until the automotive manufacturers re-design their chips (and recertify the devices) for newer technology nodes, which takes a long time. But as for general consumer semiconductors produced on new technology nodes, I have no idea what's going on. Crypto mining is pretty much dead (thank goodness) and the C

Re:

[WierdUncle]

I have read of chip makers complaining that major customers are not upgrading their technology. I am not a bleeding edge enthusiast when I design new stuff. If the old stuff still works, stick with it. This means that production quality can be optimised, based on experience.

The fact is that tried and tested technology does not make big profits, because everybody does it.

Re:

[RobinH]

When a company like TSMC first gets a new node working, there's a rush to scale it because the lifetime of a single technology node isn't very long. But the problem is that adding capacity a) takes years of planning and implementation and b) is very, very expensive. That means semiconductor manufacturers are only willing to invest in the latest technology because they figure nobody will want older technology nodes 3 or 5 years from now when the new fab is complete. The corollary is that however many 28 n