We all knew that Samsung had a huge year in 2012 as the popularity of their flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S III, pushed the South Korean manufacturer to record sales numbers, but now it looks like those sales figures didn’t slow down one bit as we entered into 2013. In fact the estimated operating profit for the first quarter of this year (January – March) rose 53% to 8.7 trillion won, which is roughly $7.7 billion US Dollars.
This number actually comes in a touch higher than the 8.3 trillion won that analysts from Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S had predicted for the company. In all this is the fifth straight quarter in a row that Samsung has made record profits and with the start of the second quarter comes with it the looming released of the 50 pound behemoth that is the Galaxy S IV so we should be seeing another record forthcoming.
While we all like to focus on the high end smartphones that Samsung produces like the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note series of “phablets”, it’s actually the mid and low end devices that pushes a lot of these sales figures into the stratosphere. Analysts look towards the “less affluent customers in emerging markets” buying handsets like the Rex and the Galaxy Pop as one of the reasons that Samsung is doing so much better than it’s competitors and more specifically Apple.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to those of you that follow Android news at all that Samsung releases a lot of these lower to mid range handsets. What may be a bit shocking is the sheer amount however and in the past year they have released over thirty smartphones, that’s around one every twelve days.
It was the ability to hit every price point on the spectrum that allowed Samsung to overtake their main rival Apple in the post holiday sales quarter. Looking at the hard sales numbers, Samsung beat Apple 63 million to 47.8 million in Q4 2012 and 68-70 million to roughly 30 million in Q1 2013. Additionally, while Samsung’s overall value dropped three percent to $220 billion, Apple fared much worse dropping 19 percent over that same period.