Samsung is the worlds largest smartphone manufacturer and currently the biggest Android partner when it comes to number of handsets produced and sold, but even being the biggest manufacturer of smartphones on a global scale doesn’t make you impervious to operating profit decline. According to sources, Samsung saw a 3.3 percent decline in operating profits coming to a total of 8.5 trillion Korean ($7.3 Billion ) won for the first quarter , although their end of the quarter numbers did end up surpassing the projected number of 8.4 trillion won.
In mobile operating profits alone, Samsung saw a decline to 6.43 trillion won, which is up from the fourth quarter of 2013 that saw a mobile operating profit of 5.47 trillion won. Samsung posted a higher operating profit than the previous quarter, but from the first quarter last year Samsung posted a mobile operating profit of 6.7 trillion won showing that they are down in mobile operating profits for the same time last year. Samsung expects the sales and operating profits to rise as the year progresses thanks to the higher number of mobile device sales that are predicted to take place. Samsung’s shares came to a total net worth of $220 billion as of closing in the stock market today, which is a decline of about 0.8% altogether.
Samsung may start to see an increase in operating profits if it can reach a larger number of sales once the Galaxy Note 4 drops later on in the year, but they may have a tough time as they face increasing competition from competitors and other OEMs that are also developing larger “phablet” like device with bigger displays. Where Samsung potentially stands to see the most positive operating profit margins is with large screen tablets where it doesn’t see much competition. Samsung is also making a push to gain more business customers in addition to the large portion of consumer based marketshare that they already dominate, which is evident by the release of the Note and Tab “Pro” line of devices announced earlier this year and recently launched. Mobile devices aren’t the only section of products where Samsung sees decent growth, but mobile devices does make up its largest portion, totaling 60% of all the profits that Samsung sees annually.