Samsung Electronics who reported record revenue growth in Australia last financial year has reported record third quarter global revenues.
Net income rose 25 percent to $7.6 billion on surging sales of smartphones and tablets.
Profits rose to $9.56 billion which was higher that what Samsung forecast.
The operating profit came in at 7 percent higher than in the previous quarter, and was a whopping 26 percent up from the same period last year.
Samsung CEO JK Shin said that Samsung had sold 40 million units of their Galaxy S4 in its first 6 months on the market, and in today’s announcements the company reveals it saw an increase in smartphone shipments of around 10 percent.
Investors and analysts are concerned that Samsung can keep up their record growth in the profitable, high-end smartphone market which several observers claim is plateauing. The Companies IT & Mobile Communications division saw revenue increase by just 3 percent.
The biggest growth came in the Korean Companies semiconductor business, sales of memory for mobile devices and gaming consoles was up 12 percent from the previous quarter. TV sales where Samsung has 23% share in Australia and are market leaders saw revenue drop 12 percent.
The consumer-electronics division, which oversees the TV and home-appliance businesses, was 350 billion won, compared with 400 billion won a year earlier.
TV makers are reeling from sluggish demand, while tougher competition is accelerating price reductions. Global shipments for liquid-crystal display TVs may fall 0.7 percent to 205.1 million units for this year, market researcher TrendForce said recently.
The final figure may be as low as 202 million units, it said. Samsung’s display division, which dominates the market for panels using organic light-emitting diodes, had an operating profit of 980 billion won in the third quarter, compared with the 1.17 trillion won a year earlier.
Earnings are climbing on shipments of smartphones and processors for Apple devices.
After adding a smartwatch and its first phone with a curved screen, Asia’s biggest technology company registered designs for spectacles to challenge Google Glass in the wearable devices market with these devices set to be shown at the 2014 CES show in Las Vegas.
“Samsung has proved it has better tactics to win the battle,” said Lee Seung Woo, an analyst at IBK Securities Co. “In the smartphone race, we should categorize Samsung differently from the minor league, second-tier players.”
“The Apple versus Samsung smartphone war is still focused squarely on the premium-tier for now,” Neil Mawston, an executive director at researcher Strategy Analytics, said in an e-mail. “Apple is feeling the heat from Samsung in the smartphone premium-tier and the slightly cheaper iPhone 5c is Apple’s competitive response to the Samsung threat.”
Samsung is rolling out new devices to target both higher-and lower-end consumers. The Galaxy Round with a curved display went on sale this month, and in September it released the Note 3 and the Galaxy Gear wristwatch device that can make phone calls, check e-mails and take photos.
The company registered a design in South Korea for eyeglasses that can show information from a smartphone and enable users to take calls, setting up a potential challenger to Google’s Glass.
