Samsung employees reportedly handed back $2.9 million to apologize for poor performance

Samsung’s profits are dipping from their exceptional heights on the back of several extremely popular smartphones, and many of the company’s employees are feeling the pressure. According to Reuters, close to 200 managers from Samsung’s mobile division have returned a quarter of a recent bonus that they received in an effort to show that they accept responsibility for the company’s waning performance and would work harder moving forward. Gestures like returning a bonus are reportedly not uncommon for those working corporate jobs in South Korea, particularly among public companies. The value of the returned bonuses is estimated at over 3 billion won ($2.92 million).

For its first quarter of 2014, Samsung reported a profit of 8.49 trillion won ($8.23 billion). Though it’s a substantial figure, it’s a dip from the 8.78 trillion won that it saw a year earlier, and that dip is expected to repeat itself for Samsung’s quarter two. Last year, Q2 saw Samsung take in 9.53 trillion won (around $8.5 billion), and even that fell short of Wall Street’s expectations for the formidable smartphone maker; for this year’s second quarter, Samsung predicts that it’ll see only 8.49 trillion won. That’s all to say that smartphone growth is continuing to slow, as we’ve been seeing, and it sounds as though Samsung’s managers have taken note.