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Is Samsung about to go up in flames?

Kai Ryssdal Sep 12, 2016
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A woman walks past billboards of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 and S7 at a mobile phone shop in Seoul on September 12, 2016. Samsung shares plunged on September 12 after the South Korean electronics giant urged global users to stop using its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone due to a spate of exploding batteries that raised alarm around the world.  JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images

Is Samsung about to go up in flames?

Kai Ryssdal Sep 12, 2016
A woman walks past billboards of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 and S7 at a mobile phone shop in Seoul on September 12, 2016. Samsung shares plunged on September 12 after the South Korean electronics giant urged global users to stop using its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone due to a spate of exploding batteries that raised alarm around the world.  JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images
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If you did any air travel over the weekend, you may have noticed an unfamiliar announcement in the terminals: Passengers were advised not to turn on or charge Samsung Galaxy Note 7s while on board or store the smartphone in checked baggage.

Samsung announced an replacement program for the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 on September 2nd after 35 reports of the lithium batteries overheating and exploding, according to Reuters.  

Kai Ryssdal spoke with Molly Wood, Marketplace’s senior tech correspondent, on what is next for Samsung.

On the future of Samsung:

Interestingly, Samsung has been dogged with questions of quality kind of forever. People, especially who have been following them as an electronics company, know this, but I think the way forward is just to keep going, to keep pushing the Note 7 and to keep advertising it. Everybody who’s tried it really likes it. I actually feel like there’s every reason to think that they could get past this, but this cannot ever happen again.  

Click on the audio player above to hear the entire interview.

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