Samsung is going to release their Q1 2011 financial results later this month, but they’ve issued some guidance to get people prepared for the kinds of numbers they’re going to dish out. The figure that stands out, to us at least, is the South Korean company’s operating profit. It’s between 2.7 trillion and 3.1 trillion Korean won, which if you average it out and convert to dollars comes out to about $2.5 billion. That’s a 34.2% slip from the same quarter last year. There’s much speculation as to what’s caused this. Some analysts are saying that it’s a lowered demand for flat panel televisions. All it takes it one trip to your local electronics store to see the glut of 3D HDTVs out there to figure out that yea, maybe no one wants this garbage. Others are saying that competition in the smartphone and tablet space is so intense that Samsung has lost their edge. We find that a little bit harder to believe since Samsung has doing a tremendous job at setting new records, quarter after quarter, in terms of both the number of handsets they ship, and the profits that the handset division takes in.
Whatever it is, we’ll find out soon, and if it is mobile phones … then the company deserves this little kick in the ass. Samsung needs to step up their game if they want to be a global brand that people actually prefer over something like LG or HTC instead of a brand they purchase because it’s cheaper than everything else out there. They can no longer cut corners in terms of picking materials or writing buggy software that was made solely for the intent of creating a fasade of differentiation in the Android space. And let’s not forget about Bada. What’s that all about? Does the world need yet another operating system?
What words of advice to you have to offer Samsung? Do you own anything they’ve recently made? How does their hardware fare against what you’ve previously had?