Woes worsen for Samsung ’s exploding phone

Samsung’s combustible Galaxy Note 7 problem just got worse.

Shares of the electronics giant dropped 7% Monday in Korean trading — wiping out $14.3 billion in market value and extending a slide that has taken shares down 10% this month — as reports of damage from exploding rechargeable lithium batteries in the smartphone circulated.

This weekend, a 6-year-old boy in New York was burned when a Note 7 burst in his hands, the

New York Post reported. This followed reports from Florida, South Carolina and Australia, where users told of explosions.

The reports point to a problem beyond the 35 instances of faulty batteries Samsung disclosed when it halted sales and announced a voluntary recall this month. At the time, it had sold 2.5 million of the devices.

“There is no way to recover this version of the phone. ... Samsung has a huge black eye,” says tech analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group.

Late last week, the Consumer Product Safety Commission warned consumers to stop using and charging their Galaxy Note 7s because of the risk of exploding batteries. That followed a warning from the Federal Aviation Administration to avoid turning on or charging Note 7s in airplanes.

In St. Petersburg, Fla., a jeep went up in flames after the owner left his Note charging in the vehicle, according to News10-Tampa Bay. The device is suspected as the cause of a garage fire in South Carolina, a family told WMBF News. A man in Perth, Australia, said in a Reddit post that an igniting device caused about $1,300 in damage to his hotel room.

Samsung ’s third-quarter results could take a hit of up to $900 million because of the recall, Myung Sub Song, an analyst at HI Investment & Securities, told CNBC. He expects shipments of the pen-based phablet to top 6 million in the third and fourth quarters, down from estimates of 12 million to 15 million.