Samsung is tapping a new president for its struggling mobile division in what is so far the biggest change since the group's heir apparent, Jay Y. Lee, took over after his father, Lee Kun-hee, suffered a heart attack last year.
The 59-year-old J.K. Shin will be handing over day-to-day management of Samsung's mobile communications unit to 54-year-old Dongjin Koh, who will be taking over as the president. Shin, however, will remain in charge of the overall mobile division for Samsung, and will instead be focusing on crafting long-term strategies and developing new avenues for the growth of the business.
The change in role, however, significantly diminishes the influence of Shin on the mobile business as Samsung continues its uphill battle against rivals from both spectrums of the smartphone market, with Apple in the higher end, and low-cost producers Huawei and Xiaomi in the lower end.
According to Kim Sang-jo, an economics professor at Hansung University, the performance of Shin in the past has been overshadowed the results of the Galaxy S6, which fell short of what was expected.
"Today's appointments appear to acknowledge the need to develop a management system that can more proactively respond to challenges from Xiaomi and other Chinese companies," he added.
According to Samsung, Koh, who was previously the head of the mobile research and development unit of Samsung, played a critical role in developing premium devices such as the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy Note 5. This experience could play a huge role in how he would handle the issues being currently faced by Samsung's mobile division, with the company touting how he helped in developing services and software such as the KNOX security platform and Samsung Pay.
Some analysts, however, were not impressed by the shuffling of leadership. While the moves do seem to indicate that Samsung has acknowledged the need for change, new strategies may not be emerging soon.
Chang Sea-jin, a business professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, noted that with Koh's similar engineering background as Shin, Samsung looks to be on the same path of focusing on hardware.
