Click to enlarge. Source: Which?
FORTUNE — Confession: Between Apple’s (AAPL) developers conference (which I watched from afar) and the e-book antitrust trial (which I’ve been attending), I must have taken my eye off the Apple v. Samsung smartphone wars.
Otherwise, how could I have missed Miyoung Kim’s report Sunday out of Reuters‘ Seoul bureau that triggered such memorable U.S. headlines as
- Wall Street Wakes-Up to the Folly of Samsung’s Volume Strategy (Patently Apple)
- Samsung Goes The Way Of Apple On Galaxy S4 Fears (ValueWalk)
- Apple probably drank 6% of Samsung’s milkshake (Quartz)
The Reuters report, titled Samsung analysts ask hard questions as S4 marketing charm wears off, cited a “massive wave of downgrades” — including such high-profile brokerage houses as JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs — after analysts realized they’d made “hopelessly optimistic forecasts for [Samsung’s] smartphone sales.”
Between June 6 and June 13, Samsung shed 21.5 trillion Won in market value, or nearly $19 billion.
As Apple investors know all too well, a loss of value in the stock market can have a ripple effect in the media, leading to artifacts like the one above, created by Which? and spotted by BGR, that questions Samsung’s oft-cited strategy of making smartphones and tablets in any shape or size a consumer might want.