South Korea's Samsung Electronics posted its first ever quarterly loss today, joining a host of technology companies including Microsoft and Nokia suffering from diving prices and slumping consumer demand.
But Internet search giant Google proved relatively resilient to the gloom, joining Apple and IBM as one of the rare bright spots in the battered tech sector.
Consumer demand for computers, phones, TVs and other gadgets has slumped as the global financial crisis grew into a broad recession that engulfed the United States and much of Europe and damped demand in once-resilient emerging markets.
Samsung, the world's top maker of memory chips and LCD screens, posted a fourth quarter operating loss of 937 billion won ($682 million), more than double the loss analysts polled by Reuters had expected.
"Samsung will likely bleed more, if not suffer wider losses, as the global economy is expected to slump further well into the first half of this year," said Lee Jeong, an analyst at Hana Daetoo Securities.
"Although there are signs that the prices of chips and LCD panels have stabilised recently, it's hard to predict when they will pick up, given the bleak outlook for the global demand."
Samsung, also the world's second largest mobile phone maker, declined to give any guidance on future results or capital investments for this year, saying only that it would invest very conservatively.
Shares in Samsung, South Korea's biggest company worth around $48 billion, closed down 4.1 per cent, while the cost of insuring against a default on its debt rose.
Technology stocks across Asia were already under pressure after a procession of grim news in the past 24 hours.
In Tokyo, shares in Japan's Sony Corp tumbled 7 per cent after the maker of Bravia flat TVs, Cyber-shot digital cameras and PlayStation games machines said it would post a bigger-than-expected $2.9 billion operating loss this business year.
Sony blamed sliding demand, a stronger yen and restructuring at its ailing electronics operations and unveiled a more aggressive cost cutting plan, targetting savings for the year through March 2010 to 250 billion yen.
Credit rating firm Moody's said it may lower Sony's A2 credit rating following the warning, and analysts thought more would need to be done to restore profitability.
"Sony has not significantly altered reform initiatives from the December plan and will need some time to fundamentally change the business model," Credit Suisse analyst Koya Tabata wrote in a report to clients.
Reuters