Samsung: ‘we’re not doing very well in the tablet market’ (update)

Manufacturers at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona may be generally upbeat about their succeses, but at least one executive from Samsung has a more sobering perspective on his company’s situation: as CNET reports, Samsung executive Hankil Yoon admitted earlier today that “honestly, we’re not doing very well in the tablet market.” It’s not fully clear what Yoon meant by the comment as no specific sales benchmarks were mentioned, but it might have something to do with the fact that even HP sold more tablets than Samsung in 2011. The comment also highlights Android’s general struggles in the tablet market; earlier today Google’s Andy Rubin told us that Samsung’s Galaxy products were the best-selling Android tablets excluding the Amazon Kindle Fire.

Nonetheless, Yoon was optimistic that Samsung will perform well this year — he said that the company expects to ship 10 million Galaxy Notes and that he hopes the 5-inch phone will “cannibalize” the original 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab. He says that “the best thing to survive in the market is to kill your products,” and that “we want to stay competitive in the market.” And with a new 5-inch, 7-inch, and 10.1-inch tablet in its portfolio, Samsung will have plenty of products to kill down the line if its stays true to Yoon’s strategy.

Update: Samsung has provided us with the following statement regarding Yoon’s remarks: “Seeking to kill your own product by releasing increasingly compelling devices might position Samsung as a confident brand. A brand ambitious to improve its products so that the choice for consumers is between several Samsung products rather than between Samsung and its competitors’ products.”