Channel Beat: Samsung To Kill Off Some Smartphones Amid Crashing Profits

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Samsung will eliminate up to one-third of its smartphone models in 2015 while its profit continues to nosedive.

Samsung reported a near-50 percent drop in profit during the third quarter, and a 20 percent drop only three months earlier. Samsung’s hold on the global smartphone market has dropped to less than 24 percent, compared with 33 percent at this time last year.

Mobility experts say Samsung’s problem is presenting too many models to customers, in comparison to Apple’s streamlined offerings. Samsung did not offer any comment, and has not disclosed which phones will be discontinued.

Cisco launched two new solutions at its collaboration conference this week, the Business Edition 6000S and the new cloud-based app, Project Squared.

The 6000S is a new communications platform targeting smaller organizations. It’s a similar, but more affordable version of the Business Edition 6000. Like the original version, the 6000S bundles voice, video, and instant messaging into a single router.

Project Squared is a new app that combines chat, audio, video and content-sharing capabilities into a single tool. The intention of the app is to aid mobile and remote workers, and it’s designed to connect anywhere in the world on any device. Project Squared is available now, for free.

Microsoft’s Azure public cloud customers suffered from outages in many regions worldwide this week, due to a glitch in a performance update.

Microsoft said it had extensively tested the update before rolling it out, and scaled it back as soon as outages were reported. Microsoft critics took to social media to complain about the shortfall, with one distinguished analyst calling it a ’major red flag for enterprises considering Azure.’

Microsoft partners are most concerned about growing competition from Amazon Web Services, and say Microsoft will need to react more quickly to outages.

PUBLISHED NOV. 21, 2014