Things were going so well. Samsung had put a rough 18 months in the smartphone market behind it and was back on form. In February it launched the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge smartphones, both of which received critical acclaim and both of which sold in huge numbers, helping Samsung report its biggest profits in over two years.

In August it launched the large screen Galaxy Note 7 again receiving widespread critical acclaim in the press and selling in record numbers and the company had beaten Apple's iPhone 7 Plus to market by a full month.

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Then, it all went wrong. Reports of the Galaxy Note 7 exploding and burning people began to trickle through, and while isolated reports of such incidents are not uncommon, when the trickle turned into a stream, Samsung knew it was in trouble, and finally it was left with little choice.

On 2 September, two weeks after it went on sale, Samsung halted sales and issued a global recall for all 2.5 million Note 7 smartphones that had been sold, admitting that a malfunction with the battery cells was the cause of the problems.

The bad news for Samsung continued

The Federal Aviation Authority in the US issued a warning, urging airline passengers to avoid using Galaxy Note 7 phones on planes, leading to airlines making safety announcements about the Galaxy Note 7 before flights departed, further damaging Samsung's reputation.

Stories have emerged about a six-year-old boy being burned; a firefighter's house burning down; and a car catching fire — all blamed on Samsung's new phone. It has been banned from a college campus and New York's public transport system.

In the middle of it all, Apple launched the iPhone 7 Plus, the Note 7's main competition, and to make matters worse Apple has announced its new large screen smartphone is already sold out, even before it goes on sale. And there is no sign yet of how soon Samsung will put the Galaxy Note 7 back on the shelves.

The result? Samsung saw $22 billion (£16bn) wiped off its market value in just two days.

What's going to be the long term result on Samsung's smartphone business?

"This is all still unfolding, so it's still a little hard to gauge how this is going to impact Samsung over the long term, but it's already clear that it's going to have at least something of a lasting impact," Jan Dawson, chief analyst with Jackdaw Research told me, adding: "There have just been too many stories and too much coverage of this battery issue for it to simply go away. At least something of all this will stick around and make people think just a little longer about buying future Samsung devices."

As Dawson says, this is all still unfolding and while Samsung's shares have rebounded somewhat, there is still a lot of confusion.

Adding to this sense of confusion are reports this week of issues with the company's other flagship smartphones. CCTV footage has emerged of a Galaxy S7 overheating and exploding in the middle of a busy cafe, while a lawsuit has been filed by a Galaxy S7 edge owner after sustaining second and third-degree burns when the phone exploded in his pocket.

Ben Wood, an analyst with CCS Insight, is "sceptical" about these reports. "There are tens of millions of those devices in use, and they have been for some time. If there was an issue it would probably have already become apparent by now." However the issue here is not about whether the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge really have a battery problem, but whether the public thinks those phones have a problem.

"[The Note 7 battery problem] will now sow seeds of doubt about all future Samsung phones and also about Samsung's customer service and capacity to make things right in similar cases," Dawson says.

Samsung moved directly from the Galaxy Note 5 to the Galaxy Note 7, skipping the Galaxy Note 6 label, in order to bring the naming of all of its flagship devices in line, but that move may now be backfiring as people easily conflate the Note 7 with the S7 and S7 edge — a problem Samsung is going to have to work hard to overcome.

Considering Samsung's size and the number of products it has in the smartphone market, the short-term impact of the Galaxy Note 7 recall will be relatively minor.

"The Note 7 is a relatively low volume smart model, compared with Samsung's overall shipment volumes, and so we expect only a small impact on Samsung's third calendar quarter smartphone volumes," Ian Fogg, analyst with IHS said. "But as a flagship model with good margins, both the lack of Note 7 sales, and the cost of managing the recall will hurt Samsung's mobile handset profitability and average selling prices."

As for the long-term impact, opinions are divided. While Dawson believes there will be a prolonged impact, Imran Choudhray, analyst at GfK Technology, believes the lasting damage will be offset by Samsung doing the right thing.

"The recall could have a negative impact with those who were considering Samsung but that negative sentiment is also offset by the positive aspect that comes with doing the right thing, which in this case is a global recall in the interests of consumers. As a result, consideration and intention won't have been damaged for the long term."

Samsung fumbled the recall

But that is not necessarily the case. In the US for example, Samsung appears to have made a number of missteps in its handling of the recall. It failed to initially inform the Consumer Product Safety Commission before issuing the recall, a step which by law needs to be taken within 24 hours of a risk being identified. An official recall in the US has since been announced by the CPSC.

Samsung has also changed its advice to Note 7 customers, initially failing to instruct them to turn off the phone, before doing so a week later. Samsung also told customers that replacement handsets would be available the same week as it announced the recall, but that was also inaccurate in most markets.

Growth in the smartphone market is rapidly slowing down while competition from Chinese smartphone brands increases. This means that everyone is being pushed to the limit to come up with innovations and engineering miracles. Samsung has shown that it can compete with the best but by pushing so much it may have overreached and recovering from such a controversy will not be easy — or cheap.

Samsung declined a request to provide a spokesman to address these issues and discuss the impact of the recall on the company's long term future.