Samsung is confident of a turnaround in the second half of 2019 after, as expected, it posted a 60 per cent drop in operating profit for the first quarter.
Samsung Electronics warned investors it was going to make a lot less money this quarter, and sure enough, the company just reported first-quarter earnings that show profits slid 60 percent compared to last year, from 15.64 trillion won (roughly $13.4 billion) to just 6.2 trillion won (about $5.3 billion).
Samsung says the Galaxy S10 lineup actually sold well, with the company shipping 78 million phones overall (as well as 5 million tablets) in the quarter, and that any weakness in phones can be explained by its low and mid-range models cannibalizing sales for last year’s Galaxy models.
The company says things should improve in the second half of the year, with more demand for flash memory in servers, as well as smartphones with 256GB of storage and up, and the company says it’s actually shipping more processors and modems even as demand for its image sensors are slowing that last one due to “weak smartphone seasonality.”
It also hopes that new devices in the Samsung Galaxy A and Galaxy Note range will aid smartphone sales.
5G is also an area for growth, with Samsung hoping that compatible handsets will drive sales of its own handsets and those from competitors powered by its components. The Korean giant is also eyeing a greater share of the networking market and has benefited from the arrival of 5G in its homeland.
It also said it saw foldable phones as an area for growth both in terms of display and handset revenue. We hope it’s more success than its initial launch.
