14ymedio, Havana, 3 November 2016 — The industry giant Samsung Electronic will open a store in Havana before the end of the year. The products of the South Korean firm will be available in the market at 3rd Avenue and 70th Street in Miramar, west of the city, as confirmed by a press release issued Wednesday by Gilberto Ramirez, Latin America marketing manager for the company.
The Asian firm took advantage of its participation in the 34th edition of the International Fair of Havana (FIHAV) to make the announcement. The exhibition area of Samsung at the Expocuba fairgrounds is one of the most visited for its attractive technology, among which are telephones, televisions and accessories for telecommunications.
The firm works closely with the Hard Currency Collection Stores (TRD), a state monopoly with a presence in all provinces of the country.
Samsung is participating in FIHAV for the fifth year and this year has a 281 square meter exhibition space. Ramirez says that the large variety of equipment exhibited at the place lets visitors ” interact” with the terminals and test their operation.
The chance to test the 360° high resolution virtual reality goggles designed and manufactured by Samsung has set off a lot of excitement.
The company’s products have been coming to the island for years, mainly sold in the informal market. The phones and tablets of the Asian brand are highly valued by Cuban users who choose terminals operating with Android, more flexible than others in responding to the country’s poor internet connectivity conditions.
Samsun’s flat-panel televisions also enjoy the preference of domestic customers, because they offer multiple ports to connect everything from USB drives to hard drives, a technical characteristic that supports the consumption of audiovisual materials other than those presented by official state TV.
However, Samsung will open its first store on the island at a time when the company is facing a crisis of credibility and the falling share prices, after the problems caused by the company’s Note 7 devices, which it no longer sells after several caught fire.
The decision of Samsung to stop selling Note 7 affected the share price of the conglomerate on the Seoul Stock Exchange, where shares fell around 8% after the report of the withdrawal of the model, a loss of 18 billion in capitalization.
