You know the way that Apple’s heroically struggling to build a new “spaceship” HQ capable of housing its army of brilliant worker ants who design the iPhone? Well, Samsung has an easier solution for managing the size of its phone division: just fire a load of people.

New statistics published courtesy of Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service underline the degree to which Samsung’s smartphone business is struggling — with 5,000 employees booted out of the door over the past year, while 30 percent of execs are expected to follow them in the next month.

The loss of 5,000 employees brings Samsung’s workforce down to 212,331. That’s still a massive number, but the report notes that the cuts were predominantly focused on Samsung’s Samsung Display and Samsung Electronics businesses, and were the result of, “slowdowns in Samsung’s handset business.”

A second report notes that Samsung is expected to cut 30 percent of execs next month, with one company member reporting that, “one thing for sure is that more Samsung executives will leave the company.”

We guess that’s what happens when Apple grabs 95 percent of all profits in the smartphone industry. Who knows — maybe Samsung could just expand its robot initiative to replace its entire human smartphone division with would-be Terminators?

Via: Patently Apple