Samsung and HTC shares get battered to new lows

Samsung's shares extended their drop in Korean trading, after they were skidding on Friday to a 9-month low due to the flagship smartphone business diminished guidance.

Analysts, who are always clever after the fact, already said that the high-end segment has hit the brick wall of market saturation, and the tepid upgrade that the Galaxy S4 is likely won't excite consumers to break their contracts, not to mention that carriers are making it harder and harder to get a new handset, so as to avoid doling out subsidies.

In the meantime another flagship Android maker, HTC, got punished in the market. It met its guidance, but not investors' expectations, which were eagerly awaiting the results from the HTC One sales. As a result, shares in the Taiwanese company dropped to a 7-year low. 

Usually when things are going perfectly, companies begin to slack and issue incremental upgrades until the market wakes them up, so these share price troubles might herald a new era of smartphone innovation going forward, and we are all for that.

source: WSJ & Reuters