Samsung’s Bang-up Quarter

For all the recent chatter in this blog about Apples and iPhones, Samsung yesterday announced a bang up quarter of its own, including an operating profit of $14.15 billion for the December quarter.

The company’s semiconductor division drove the fourth-quarter earnings on the back of strong demand for its memory chips, while its mobile business saw a 3.2 on-year decline in operating profits, according to a report from CNBC.

Samsung said its fourth-quarter earnings were driven by strong demand for its memory chips used in data centers and smartphones.

CNBC also reported that research firm Gartner indicated preliminary results showed Samsung had leapfrogged Intel to become the world’s top semiconductor supplier last year, garnering some 14.6 percent of the market in 2017.

However, headwinds for memory are likely ahead of the company:

“Samsung’s lead is literally built on sand, in the form of memory silicon,” Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement earlier this month. He added that memory pricing will weaken in 2018 as China steps up its memory production capacity. “We then expect Samsung to lose a lot of the revenue gains it has made.”
– via CNBC

Samsung is expected to introduce its new flagship product, the Galaxy S9, at the coming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.