Samsung: 'We're not pulling out of laptops'

“Samsung has no intention of closing its Notebook division in 2011.” That’s according to a statement the company has sent us following our story yesterday that the company could possibly pull out of the laptop market - if it fails to gain over three times its current share of the worldwide notebook market.

The story arose from a Samsung presentation attended by TechRadar at its HQ in Suwon City, South Korea. Samsung head of overseas sales Sukyong Hong gave the presentation and on his slides said the 2011 target was 11 million laptop sales – equating to 5.7 per cent market share.

The revelation arose from the line "minimum requirement to survive in the market" under the 11 million figure. When asked whether the required 11 million global sales in 2011 was possible for Samsung to achieve, head of overseas sales Sukyong Hong said "we should, that's our target."

Market saturation

“Following a story published yesterday regarding the long term strategy of the Samsung Electronics Notebook PC Division, Samsung would like to clarify its position,” said the statement sent to us a few minutes ago. “Samsung has no intention of closing its Notebook division in 2011. We do however expect the market to become increasingly saturated and therefore for there to be increased price competitiveness.”

“In light of this Samsung Electronics has set an ambitious but realistic goal of achieving 5.7 per cent market share by 2011 to sustain profitability. This level of market share should not be linked to survival within the marketplace but to ensuring sustainability for long term business growth.”

This point had already been clarified in yesterday’s briefing by Dinesh Chand, UK Product Manager for Samsung's Mobile PC division. "The market is going to become more saturated...it's the minimum level we need to sustain profitability," said Chand. "It's not about survival, it's about sustainability. We're talking about markets we've not yet entered."

The statement continued to talk about those markets. “This has been demonstrated in Samsung Electronics’ continued expansion into new markets, most recently entering Italy in August 2007 and Poland in March 2008. Samsung has an aggressive growth strategy for 2008."