Samsung sneezes, Micron Technology catches cold
South Korean electronics giant Samsung sneezed on Thursday and Micron Technology (MU) caught a cold. Samsung reported its first year-over-year drop in net profit in nearly three years for the second quarter, as competition heated up with low-cost smartphone rivals from China, including Xiaomi, Huawei and Lenovo. The world’s No. 1 smartphone vendor by shipments, Samsung said its net profit fell 20% to 6.25 trillion won ($6.1 billion) from 7.77 trillion won in the year-earlier quarter. Sales fell 8.9% to 52.35 trillion won. While Samsung stock isn’t traded in the U.S., the impact of the company’s earnings report was felt by Micron, a maker of memory chips for computers, mobile phones and other devices. Micron fell more than 6% to near 30.55 in the stock market today. Micron investors were spooked by commentary from Samsung executives who said they planned to increase production of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips,…