Samsung has been struggling with the quarterly revenue and profits for the past year in its smartphone business, a result of increased competition from other brands offering up less expensive options but with near equally as impressive and powerful specifications. Although Samsung’s future quarterly earnings for the remainder of the 2015 calendar year could end up positive thanks to the upcoming launch of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, Samsung today posted estimates of what it expects out of it’s 2015 first-quarter revenue and profit earnings, which they state are expected to decline nearly 30 percent compared to the same period last year.
Samsung did mention however, that their estimates come out ahead of what analysts thought would be posted for the three-month time period ending from the beginning of the year up until March 31st, which was expected to be about 5.5 trillion Won. According to Samsung’s estimates, this number is expected to hit about 5.9 trillion Won which converts to about $5.4 billion. Profit is still profit, but a decrease is certainly not what Samsung is aiming for. While analysts do believe that sales from Samsung two new flagship devices will help to increase profits for last three quarters, competition from companies like Xiaomi, Huawei, and others have been outpacing Samsung in emerging markets where there is quite a bit more growth for smartphones.
Samsung isn’t just losing out in the low-cost device range though. Apple has been giving the South Korean manufacturer more competition when it comes to higher-end smartphones thanks to Apple’s recent offerings with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. What will be interesting to see is how Samsung’s profits come about with its two new high-end devices in contrast to Apple’s own offerings. Apple has been a clear competitor for Samsung over the last 6 months, as Apple’s smartphone market share from the fourth quarter of 2014 rose from 17.8 percent in 2013 up to 20.4 percent. In comparison to Apple’s numbers, Samsung’s shares dropped from 29.5 percent in 2013 to 19.9 percent in the final quarter of last year in 2014, which resulted in them now holding slightly less market share for smartphones than Apple who has been their main competition.