Is South Korean tech giant, the number one smartphone maker in the world, going the way of Motorola, BlackBerry, Nokia and Apple?

That question is now on the minds of analysts who just reviewed the growth outlook for Samsung since almost 40 per cent of the 43 analysts downgraded earnings for the tech giant and shipments to 7 million from the initial 10 million units.

The S4 is Samsung's high-end flagship device with four other versions.

With the downgrade, the analysts predicted a 0.6 per cent drop in their average forecast for Samsung's Q2 earnings to 10.4 trillion won ($9 billion), estimated Thomson Reuters.

But that would still set a quarterly record and be higher than the Q1 earnings of 8.78 trillion wons.

Following the downgrade by the 17 analysts, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are following Woori Investments & Securities, one of the largest securities companies in South Korea, in reviewing their outlook for Samsung.

Woori reduced its sales forecast for Samsung by up to 30 per cent which stirred investor concern since the tech giant's mobile production is its largest profit generator.

For the whole of 2013, Bank of America Merrill Lynch cut its estimate for the S4 sales by 5 million handsets to 65 million smartphones. If the forecast comes to pass, Samsung could lose up to $1 billion operating profit.

Meanwhile, Samsung released videos of the torture test it made the S4 phone go through prior to the model's release in the market. The tests include dousing the smartphone with water, fumbling fingers and curious kids.

Despite its plastic body, the S4 survived being dropped a few feet on a hard, metal surface hundreds of times. The free fall was from a height high enough to dash a ceramic mug to smithereens and similar to the crushing of a walnut shell.

A previous CNET endurance test showed that the S4 beat the more expensive iPhone 5 in three types of torture tests, but both smartphones were no match to the tyres of a truck.

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