Samsung said in a regulatory filing its April-June operating profit was 8.1 trillion won ($7.17 billion), matching the 8.1 trillion won it guided for in early July.
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Seou: Samsung Electronics Co. reported Thursday forecast-beating earnings results that were the best in two years as consumers snapped up its Galaxy smartphones in signs of a revival in its mobile phone business.
Samsung, the world’s largest smartphone maker, beat forecasts even as growth in the overall smartphone industry slows.
Sustained profit gains from the company’s cheaper smartphones, such as the J series, also helped to boost mobile earnings.
The mobile division accounts for the lion’s share of Samsung’s business, but it has been increasingly squeezed by competition both from Apple’s iPhone and by lower-end devices from Chinese rivals such as Huawei.
Samsung was the biggest beneficiary of sluggish sales of Apple Inc’s iPhone 6S models, as USA wireless carriers promoted S7 phones, helping to reduce Samsung’s own marketing expenses. The company launched the latest versions of its flagship smartphones in March, several weeks sooner than it did past year.
The company said the Galaxy S7 Edge sales proportion increased.
“The smartphone and TV divisions led the earnings surprise for the quarter”, said Greg Roh, an analyst at HMC Investment Securities.
Samsung’s smartphone business division posted an operating profit of 4.3 trillion won for the second quarter, while its semiconductor division reported an operating profit of 2.6 trillion won.
Samsung predicts continued increase in demand for its smartphones and tablets in the second half of the year.
Early launches helped Samsung report strong sales during the first quarter but there were doubts that it could sustain the momentum during the second quarter.
Samsung sold 16 million units of the S7 smartphone for the second quarter.
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Samsung was the first to mass produce chips using the technology and is producing the high-margin chips – used in mobile gadgets and hard drives for servers – at its factories at home and in China.
