Samsung presents a stark dichotomy these days: while its memory unit is literally minting gold, its consumer-facing units are languishing deep in purgatory.
The same memory-related tailwind that is now allowing Samsung DS to earn more profit this year than it earned cumulatively over the past 40 years continues to act as a potent headwind for other units.
Against this backdrop, Samsung's consumer electronics-related operations in the US are in an upheaval right now, while trying to leverage the excuse of its HQ relocation.
Samsung Electronics America operations face an HQ relocation-related upheaval
Samsung Electronics America (SEA) has culled 739 roles from its operations in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, as it prepares to move its headquarters to Texas. The office employed around 1,200 people before the latest downsizing.
While Samsung insists that most of the affected employees have received relocation offers, some have been let go. Moreover, this HQ relocation has also impacted around 100 employees from its Mobile division office in Plano, Texas.
This comes as an internal SEA document viewed by Reuters notified some employees on June 30 of an "enterprise-wide reduction-in-force," going on to add that there were a "significant number of impacts."
Do note that Samsung Electronics had 11,770 employees in the United States as of the end of 2025, including those working in its chip division.
This comes as Samsung Mobile is currently contending with fierce headwinds. Faced with astronomical memory-related costs, the unit is now preparing to disclose the first operating loss in its history, which is something that Samsung Mobile evaded even when buffeted by the Note 7 saga and the resultant hit to the demand for its cellphones. In other words, the current crisis is far more debilitating than what Samsung faced when its cellphones were being banned from airplanes altogether!
As per the estimates from Samsung Securities, the Mobile unit, in conjunction with the Network Business division, will report an operating loss of 5.84 trillion won or nearly $4 billion for the entire 2026.
Meanwhile, as per the results of a recent survey conducted by the Samsung-based arm of the United Enterprise Labor Union, which is the South Korean conglomerate's biggest union by numbers, 81.5 percent of the 8,297 respondents within Samsung's Foundry division have expressed an intention to leave.
As we reported back in May, Samsung's agreement with its unionized workers will now see its memory workers take home a special performance bonus that is equal to 10.5 percent of the tech behemoth's annual operating profits, provided that such profits exceed 200 trillion won from 2026 to 2028 and 100 trillion won from 2029 to 2035.
In fact, based on the current expectations that Samsung will earn an operating profit of around 300 trillion won this year, each memory-focused employee stands to take home around 600 million won (~$400,000) in bonuses this year alone.
Samsung's new bonus plan has created an elite class of workers in its memory division, enabling these workers to receive compensation that is orders of magnitude higher than what the going rate is for other divisions, sowing conglomerate-wide resentment in the process.
Update: Samsung has provided us with a statement
Samsung has provided us a clarification on this issue:
" We are obligated to share with the state of New Jersey the total number of positions that are either impacted by a reduction in workforce or a transfer of operations to another location, which is what’s reflected in the 739 number included in the WARN filing."
About the author: Writing is my one incontrovertible passion. Over the past six years, he has authored over 2,200 distinct articles on financial and tech-related topics, spanning nearly 1 million words. And he has been a member of Wcctech mobile team since 2025. As an alumnus of the University of Toronto, Rotman Commerce Program, I bring nuance, in-depth knowledge, and a unique perspective to every topic that I cover. When I'm not writing, I'm traveling the world, exploring hidden confectionaries and restaurants as an aspiring food connoisseur.
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