South Korea’s Samsung Electronics has come out with strong revenue guidance for the first quarter of 2016. While many companies from around the world have already started announcing their Q1, 2016 results, Samsung is expected to announce its quarterly revenues only later this month. However, investors would be happy to know that the company believes its operating profits for the period will come in at 6.6 trillion won ($5.7 billion), bolstered by the reported strong demand for the two Galaxy S7 smartphones that were announced at the Mobile World Congress trade show earlier this year in the Spanish capital of Barcelona. The figure of 6.6 billion won represents an increase of 10% on a YoY basis.
As for the rest of the details regarding the company’s announcement, Samsung also said that it believes its consolidated sales will be around the 49 trillion won ($42.3 billion) mark, which would also be an YoY increase over the company’s consolidated sales figures from Q1, 2015, albeit a rather small one. That’s because back in the first three months of last year, the company’s consolidated sales were reported to be 47.1 trillion won ($40.7 billion). While Samsung hasn’t given a profit guidance for the quarter, the company had previously reported operating profits of 6.1 trillion won in the final quarter of last year, whereas back in Q1, 2015, Samsung had declared operating profits of exactly 6 trillion won.
With Samsung’s latest premium smartphones reportedly doing pretty well globally, the company is expected to post decent revenues and profits this year, especially with most tier-1 Android OEMs other then LG Electronics yet to launch their 2016 flagships. While LG announced its latest premium smartphone, the LG G5, at the MWC in Barcelona earlier this year, Huawei announced its own 2016 flagship just yesterday in London. However, while the Chinese company has gone from strength to strength in Europe and Asia, getting a foothold in the carrier-dominated US market is a whole different challenge altogether. Taiwanese vendor HTC is also expected to launch its next-gen flagship, the HTC 10, pretty soon, but the company has been struggling big time in recent years with its smartphones failing to enthuse the market for reasons the company is finding hard to address.