Samsung reported another strong quarter today. The Korean phone maker saw its profits jump 91 percent due to strong smartphone sales. This incredible growth is almost double of what the company earned last year around this time. Sammy is believed to have shipped 18-20 million Galaxy S III’s between July and September, which is a few million from Apple’s pace of 26.9 million iPhones shipped at the same time.
As you can imagine, Analysts are giddy about Samsung’s impressive numbers. Alex Spektor, Associate Director at Strategy Analytics said, “Global smartphone shipments grew 35 percent annually from 120.0 million units in Q2 2011 to 161.7 million in Q3 2012. The 35 percent growth rate was relatively soft, as a volatile global economy and maturing penetration of smartphones among contract mobile subscribers continued to moderate demand.”
It’s no question that Samsung is a big dog in this smartphone market, but what went almost unnoticed was its declining chips business. Earnings from the chips division floundered 28 percent to 1.15 trillion won, this due to prices of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips sinking. However, NAND flash chips, widely used in mobile devices, helped offset the declining numbers.
That being said, Samsung has a lot to brag about. If you check out the chart put together by Strategy Analytics here, you can see Sammy in this quarter more than doubled Apple in both Global Smartphone Shipments and Market Share. As usual, all companies are expected to see a small decline after the holidays come to an end (December).
[via Reuters, Yahoo Finance]