Samsung shares have tumbled more than 6% on the Korea Exchange. Reuters says that investors initiated a sell-off on the worries about relatively weak sales of Galaxy S4.
It is the sharpest daily decline since August 2012 when the South Korean company lost the U.S. patent lawsuit to Apple. Samsung stocks began to fall after the release of the JP Morgan report. The U.S. investment bank believes that low sales of S4 would affect the company's performance. The experts forecast that the S4 dispatches will be 20-30% lower than initially estimated and near $7-8 million a month, starting from July. Samsung reported that they have sold 10 million of its flagship Galaxy S4 a month since it was introduced on the market.
Another reason for Samsung stocks decline is the news from Apple, the Samsung's major arch-rival. Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources reported on June 7, that iPhone's producer is on the verge of launching its trade-in program for iPhone which may encourage the users to upgrade their devices.
As far as Samsung stocks make up about one-fifth of the local benchmark index KOSPI, drop in securities hurt the mood of the whole market: KOSPI was 1.8% down at the end of the day. To compare, Japanese Nikkei shed 0.21% on June 7, Shanghai Composite fell 1.4%.
