Samsung’s Galaxy may now outshine even Apple in the smartphone market, and analysts say the Korean giant has surpassed Nokia as the world’s leading handset vendor. Samsung does not report the number of phones shipped each quarter, but 93 million is the estimate from both Strategy Analytics and IHS iSuppli. Nokia reported last week that it sold 83 million phones during the first quarter.
In the smartphone arena, Strategy Analytics estimates that Samsung shipped 44.5 million devices. If all those phones were actually bought by users, Samsung is far ahead of Apple, which says it sold 35.1 million iPhones last quarter. Neil Shah of Strategy Analytics says that Samsung stopped reporting actual smartphone sales because of its ongoing patent disputes with Apple, but Shah says his firm has an analyst in Seoul who is in close contact with Samsung on smartphone sales.
Samsung does disclose financial results, of course, and there is no disagreement about those. The company posted record profits of $5.2 billion in the first quarter on revenues of $37.3 billion. Almost three quarters of Samsung’s profit came from handsets. The company says that even as seasonal demand for phones in developed markets declined from Q4, margins and profits improved due to an improved product mix. In developed markets, Samsung is focusing on higher-end phones powered by its Exynos chips. Yesterday the company announced that it has developed a quad-core Exynos for its next-generation Galaxy smartphone.
Sales and profits for Samsung’s semiconductor business were down for the quarter, hurt by price declines. Samsung says it is combating this trend by focusing on “differentiated products.”
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