Tech giant Samsung has some serious work to do to overcome its exploding phone battery fiasco, a local crisis management expert says.

Billions have been wiped from the electronics giant's market value after the recall of 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7s, due to the discovery their lithium batteries could overheat and ignite.

Regulators have stepped in to oversee the recall of a million of the phones in the US themselves, amidst conflicting information and delays, in what's been criticised as an uncoordinated response.

Dan Laufer, head of Victoria University's Marketing and International Business School, said Samsung had not handled the situation very well.

"Issues around lithium batteries are pretty well known. And so this really shouldn't have taken them by surprise, and they should've had some sort of plan in place to deal with this type of crisis," he said.

"It was apparent from the beginning of the crisis they weren't prepared."

Laufer argues there was no sense of urgency, despite the fire risk.

Samsung needed to now quickly focus on how the problem could be solved, and the inconvenience to customers could be minimised, he added, because "the long term damage to the brand by not doing that is greater than the short-term hit on profits."