Chinese Competitors Dent Samsung Profits

This time, it's not about the Apple-Samsung war. Samsung's profits are heading in the opposite direction from those of Apple, but the South Korean conglomerate can't really blame its archrival nor that company's hot new iPhone 6. Samsung said Tuesday that operating profit for the three months to September 30 would be down a whopping 60 percent compared with the same period a year ago. The decline was largely attributed to sliding smartphone sales, but that was due, not to the phenomenal success of the iPhone, but to a growing threat from Chinese competitors such as Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi, which are experiencing a sales boom in China and other parts of Asia.