Samsung India’s TV Job Cuts Follow Its Own Chip Boom

Samsung India has asked 80 to 100 television and home-appliance executives to leave, even as its parent just booked a record chip profit. Termination letters went out in small daily batches in early September, industry executives said, covering director-level staff, headquarters team leads, and branch and area managers.

The same memory-price surge filling Samsung’s books in Seoul is the cost hitting the India unit, which sells TVs, fridges, washers and phones and does not run a local chip business to offset the bill.

The Same Memory Boom That Filled Seoul’s Books

On July 30, Samsung Electronics reported a record KRW 89.5 trillion operating profit ($62 billion) for the quarter ended June 30, on sales of KRW 171.5 trillion. The Device Solutions chip group posted KRW 127.5 trillion in sales, up 56% from the prior quarter, and KRW 89.2 trillion in operating profit, or 99.7% of the company total.

The Memory Business, the company said, hit an all-time high for quarterly sales and profit by steering scarce capacity toward servers and riding an industry-wide climb in prices. It expects server DRAM, enterprise SSDs and high-bandwidth memory demand to keep the market short of supply in the second half, even with softer orders from phones and PCs.

The device side paid for that shortage. Mobile and Networks posted KRW 33.2 trillion in sales and an operating loss of KRW 0.7 trillion. Visual Display and Digital Appliances, the global TV and home-appliance units, posted KRW 14.5 trillion in sales and a slight operating loss. Device eXperience sales fell 9% from the first quarter. Earnings, the company said, declined because of elevated component cost pressures across the industry.

SAMSUNG’S Q2 SPLIT

Josh Gilbert, an analyst at eToro, put the split in one line: the chips enriching one side of Samsung are now hurting the other. India only sees the hurting side. The country unit sells finished goods. It does not book the memory profit that those goods now cost more to build.

In its first-quarter filing, Samsung said memory selling prices surged about 146% from the 2025 full-year average. Mobile memory costs for the device group rose about 107% against the same baseline. By the first quarter, mobile memory was 9.4% of that group’s raw-material buy, just above camera modules.

TrendForce still sees DRAM contract prices still climbing 13% to 18% in the third quarter, with NAND flash up 10% to 15%, a slower pace only because phone and PC buyers have hit what they can pay. DRAM industry revenue reached about $154.73 billion in the second quarter, up 59.5% from the first, the research firm said on September 7.

What the India Cuts Look Like on the Ground

The first 80 to 100 exits are concentrated in televisions and home appliances, and they run from headquarters directors down to branch and area managers. Industry executives said as much as 25% of the electronics sales and marketing workforce could be hit, a pool of about 550 to 600 company executives plus off-roll staff hired through manpower agencies. That 25% band, about 138 to 150 people if the on-roll team alone is the base, is larger than the first batch, which is why a second round is already being discussed.

THE INDIA CUTS IN FIGURES

• Asked to leave: 80 to 100 TV and home-appliance executives so far, in daily batches.
• Wider risk: Up to 25% of electronics sales and marketing, including agency staff.
• On-roll pool: About 550 to 600 executives in the domestic electronics sales team, separate from the larger phone organisation.
• Severance: Three months’ salary plus one extra month’s pay for each year of service.

An affected employee said letters had been issued daily over several days, with some people told to go without serving notice. Samsung India had not issued a public statement on the cuts as of September 8. In July, during an earlier overlap review of the TV and appliance sales teams, the company did not respond to emailed questions about job losses.

The India business is not a collapsing subsidiary. Filings with the Registrar of Companies show revenue from operations of ₹1.11 lakh crore in FY25, up 12%, and net profit of ₹11,286 crore, up 38%. Home appliances contributed about 11% of sales, the second-largest category after phones. Exports of smartphones, TVs, refrigerators and washing machines rose 25% to ₹45,930 crore, or 42% of revenue. The cuts sit inside that still-large book, aimed at a squeezed product line rather than at the whole country unit.

A Sales Network Being Folded In

The letters follow a restructuring that was already on the table in July. Three industry executives said Samsung had begun stripping overlapping functions from television and home-appliance sales, which share trade channels and distributors. A planned merger of those two sales teams has been pushed to the December quarter. In the meantime, offices are being combined and some posts are disappearing with them.

BRANCHES BEING COMBINED

• Jharkhand and Bihar: Ranchi and Patna offices merged.
• NCR: Delhi and Gurgaon combined.
• North: Punjab and Chandigarh folded together.

Viplesh Dang heads the visual display (TV) unit in India. Ghufran Alam leads digital appliances. Both were in those seats in July, when the overlap review became public. By then a rival electronics chief said he was already seeing Samsung resumes, and that matching the pay was hard.

In April, Samsung said it would globally implement cost-efficiency initiatives while driving premium sales in TVs and appliances in the second half of 2026. In May it said it would stop selling some consumer-electronics products in China. India is now getting the manpower version of that same squeeze, with a weaker rupee on top. The currency fell 9.88% against the dollar in FY26, its steepest annual drop in 14 years, and was still around 94.49 per dollar on September 7.

Phones Still Make 74% of Samsung’s India Sales

Mobile phones account for about 74% of Samsung India’s revenue, which is why the current round has left that sales force untouched. The phone market around it is shrinking. Counterpoint Research found that India smartphone shipments fell 10% year on year in April-June, the steepest June-quarter drop in six years, and it expects a 13% decline for the full year.

Senior analyst Prachir Singh said almost every major brand had raised prices several times, for an average hike of around 15% by the end of the second quarter. The mass market below ₹15,000 fell 45%. Memory’s share of the bill of materials in that band moved from under 20% to over 45%, Counterpoint said. Research director Tarun Pathak said smartphone memory prices had increased nearly four times since September 2025 and could still go higher.

INDIA SMARTPHONE SHARE IN Q2

Samsung kept second place with promotions on Galaxy A models and the S25 and S26 series, and with more weight in the ₹15,000-₹20,000 band. Galaxy Fold and Flip models have sold well, though phones priced above ₹1 lakh are only about 4% of India’s volumes. That mix helps the company hold share. It does not cancel a cost line that has already put the global mobile group in the red.

Some Samsung phone models have been raised another 5% to 10% in the latest round. Cumulative increases since last November have reached as much as 50%, still below vivo at up to 73% and Realme at up to 81%, according to All India Mobile Retailers’ Association compilations cited by industry executives. The association has also said store footfall is down 40% after repeated price increases. In TVs and air-conditioners, where industry average prices have risen 15% to 20%, Samsung has limited its own increases to 10% to 14% and leaned on online channels, where list prices are sharper.

Why the Smartphone Team Is Waiting on Diwali

The phone organisation is being held out of the current round because Samsung treats it as the core India business and is counting on a festive rebound. That protection is time-bound. Industry executives said the mobile team could be reviewed later if the season disappoints, and that another pass through TVs and appliances could follow the festival.

There’s manpower rationalisation in the home appliance and television businesses. The second round can happen after Diwali.

Industry executive, speaking anonymously

The same people said there would be no immediate job cuts in mobile because it is the company’s bread and butter and because a Diwali rebound is the working plan. That is a wager, not a shield. India’s phone market is already on course for a 13% full-year drop on Counterpoint’s numbers, and Pathak’s view is that component prices are unlikely to settle before next year. Financing already covered more than half of mainline smartphone sales in the second quarter, which is how premium tickets are still clearing even as the bottom of the market caves in.

Samsung remains among the top two brands in Indian TVs, refrigerators and washing machines, executives said, competing with LG, Haier, Whirlpool, Xiaomi and Godrej. Holding that ranking with prices that lag rivals is the aggressive-share strategy described in July. It is also why a memory spike shows up first as thinner margins, then as fewer managers, rather than as an instant retreat from the shelf.

Headquarters Already Squeezed the Device Side

The India letters are a local chapter of a split that the parent already printed in July. Chip plants are running for AI servers. Device factories are buying memory at the new price. One company, two P&Ls, and the India books only carry the second one.

HOW THE SQUEEZE ARRIVED

1. April 2026: Samsung says it will run cost-efficiency programmes in TVs and appliances in the second half while pushing premium sales.
2. May 2026: The company says it will discontinue sales of some consumer-electronics products in China.
3. July 10, 2026: Industry executives describe an India plan to strip overlapping TV and home-appliance sales functions, with job losses possible.
4. July 30, 2026: Second-quarter results show a record chip profit and an operating loss in mobile and networks, with TVs and appliances slightly in the red.
5. Early September 2026: Termination letters go out in batches to 80 to 100 India TV and appliance executives.
6. December quarter 2026: The postponed merger of India home-appliance and TV sales teams is now due.

Samsung told investors the memory market should stay undersupplied even as phone and PC demand cools, and that it will keep steering output toward high-value server parts. That choice is rational for a chip maker earning a 70% operating margin on Device Solutions. It is expensive for a country sales force whose products still need DRAM and NAND that now cost more than twice what they did, and whose customers are walking past stores after the last price hike.

The Festive Season Is the Next Test

The 80 to 100 people already asked to leave are the first visible cut. Up to a quarter of electronics sales and marketing, including agency staff, is the figure executives are using for how far the electronics side could go. The phone team is intact because Diwali is still ahead and because three-quarters of India revenue still runs through that channel.

If festive volumes recover, the current round can stay inside TVs and appliances and the December sales-team merger. If they do not, the same people who called mobile the bread and butter also said it might get evaluated later. Memory prices, on TrendForce’s third-quarter board, are still rising. The parent will keep selling those chips into a short market. The India unit will keep buying them to stock a floor that just lost a layer of managers.