Profits drop announced by Samsung

Samsung has announced a quarterly drop in its profits, but the share price of the electronics company was still up on the back of the news today (January 24th).

The firm revealed in a statement that its profit for the October to December period was 7.3tn won (£4 billion), which was down 11 per cent from the previous three months.

Operating income was revealed to have dropped by 18 per cent quarter-on-quarter and the company stated that its mobile phone division had not performed as well as expected.

Samsung's main rival in this sector is Apple, which launched two new smartphones – the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 5C – on to the market in the last 12 months.

2014 forecast

In the statement, Robert Yi, the firm's head of investor relations, stated that Samsung is expecting 2014 to follow a similar pattern as the one seen in the last 12 months – a weaker first half of the year followed by improved performance in the second half.

Record annual earnings were posted by the firm despite the quarterly drop in profits and Samsung announced that it made a net profit of 30.5 trillion won in 2013, which was a 28 per cent jump from a year ago.

Smartphones, tablets and TVs are among the most popular products made by Samsung, which has secured its place as one of the electronics sector's most dominant firms in recent years.

Indeed, Samsung stated that it now has 30 per cent of the smartphone market around the world, indicating the strong success of the Android operating system its phones use. Smart TVs also look set to be a good area of growth for the firm in the coming years.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is its latest release in this sector and some analysts had stated that sales of the device were not living up to expectations initially.

Following the release of the company's latest financial results, its share price rose by 0.62 per cent in Korea during the day's trading.

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