Market tracker IDC reported that global sales of smartphones were flat during the first quarter of 2016 compared to the same period a year earlier.
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The Galaxy S7 remains Samsung’s flagship smartphone, of course, and a next-generation model isn’t expected until 2017. As per financial data provider FactSet, analysts had projected that the company’s second-quarter operating income would be 7.4 trillion won.
“The Information Technology & Mobile Communication [IM] division as well as consumer electronics products including TVs performed better than expected”, said a Samsung spokesman.
Samsung’s rise into an electronics behemoth has been fueled by the ability to get its memory chips and displays, often the most expensive components, into devices made by others.
The mobile division likely was the top earner for the second straight quarter, raising the question of whether the South Korean company can sustain this strong momentum in the face of competition from Apple Inc and cheaper Chinese rivals. The Galaxy Note 5 is Samsung’s current Note model, but reports suggest the company will sidestep the Note 6 name to bring the Note’s numbering in line with its flagship Galaxy lineup, which stands at S7.
Apple is set to report its June-quarter earnings later this month and it will certainly be interesting to see if things picked up like they did for Samsung, or if the South Korean company really is taking a bite out of Apple right now. And while these results are only preliminary, Samsung has historically done a pretty good job of forecasting its earnings. However, considering Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and the S7 Edge have managed to do so well, despite being priced around the same figure as the iPhones, it shows that the analysts could have been wrong.
Galaxy Forever launched March 11, coinciding with the US launch of Samsung’s new high-end phones.
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Network carrier T-Mobile is rolling out the Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 update for Samsung Galaxy Note Edge and Galaxy Note 4. The high RAM capacity will be one of the major selling points for the Note 7, and that only means that Samsung might be testing a lite variant of the smartphone. Three months earlier, the analysts’ consensus was as low as 5.86 trillion won for operating profit.
