SOUTH KOREA’S Samsung Electronics Co. said yesterday it plans to cut production at a smartphone plant in China, as competition from domestic rivals squeezes its share of the world’s biggest smartphone market to less than a paltry 1 percent.

The output reduction at the factory in the southern city of Huizhou comes just six months after Samsung said it would close its only other handset plant in China, in the northeastern city of Tianjin, in a move it said would enhance efficiency.

Samsung, the world’s biggest smartphone maker, has seen its share of China’s market shrink from about 20 percent in 2013, showed data from Strategy Analytics. The intervening years have seen a shift to local champions like Huawei Technologies Co.

In the three months of 2019, however, Samsung’s smartphone sales volume in China rose 40 percent versus the previous three months, helped strong promotion of premium models and cheaper mass-market handsets, showed an April report from Counterpoint Research.

Samsung’s statement yesterday followed a report by financial magazine Caixin saying the South Korean firm had offered voluntary redundancy for some employees at the Huizhou plant.

Samsung declined to detail the plant’s capacity, staff numbers or degree of production cut.

A spokesman in the company’s China division said there would be “some adjustment to production volume and staff” based on the market situation. He declined to provide details.

(SD-Agencies)