Samsung didn’t exactly do all that well in 2014 as far as smartphone and tablet sales go. Samsung Mobile’s profit actually dropped and their results weren’t all that good at the end of last year. The company has altered their approach to some extent, and have hoped that will help when it comes to profits. Samsung has started using metal as their build material a while back and has manufactured their first metal unibody smartphones last month, the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, which are also the company’s new flagships for 2015.
This Korean tech giant has released their financial results for the first quarter, let’s check out how Samsung did. Samsung reported an operating profit of $5.63 billion and their revenue was $44 billion. Compared to the first quarter of 2014, this doesn’t seem all that solid. Samsung’s operating profit in Q1 2014 was $7.8 billion, which is over $2 billion more compared to this year. This is Samsung’s general operating profit and revenue, but let’s check out Samsung Mobile’s results. The reported operating profit is $2.5 billion, while we’re looking at $24.1 billion revenue here. Samsung has said that their smartphone sales have increased due to a higher demand for their mid-range handset, specifically the Galaxy A series of handsets. Feature phones and tablets didn’t do all that well though. During the first quarter of the year, Samsung has shipped 99 million handset, over 80% of them were smartphones. The company has shipped most devices in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
“Market demand for the smartphone is expected to continue to increase, compared to the last year, due to global expansions of LTE services and growth in emerging markets. However, tablet market growth is expected to slow down. In 2015, we will continue to do our best to increase our smartphone business with our competitive product line-up. We plan to solidify our leadership in the premium handset market with differentiated features in our products,” said JinYoung Park, Vice President of Samsung Mobile’s communications business.
According to Strategy Analytics, Samsung actually managed to de-thrown Apple and is once again the number one smartphone manufacturer in the world and holds 24% of the market. There you have it folks, it seems like Samsung is on the right path. It will be interesting to see their Q2 results after the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge shipments fully affect the company’s earnings.
