Smartphones sales drive record Samsung profit

During the October-December quarter, South Korean tech firm Samsung Electronics witnessed its quarterly operating profit touching an all-time-high of $4.7 billion (or 5.3 trillion won), largely due to the notably robust smartphone sales; and has earmarked $22 billion in spending this year for boosting the production of chips and flat screens in order to gain further dominance in the mentioned markets.

Reporting its earnings for the mentioned quarter, Samsung said that its operating profit was not only along the lines of the company's projections, but was also higher than the earlier quarterly record-high of 5 trillion won in the 2010 second quarter.

With the quarterly profit at Samsung increasing 76 percent year-over-year and 25 percent quarter-over-quarter, the earnings from the company's telecoms business touched a new high of $2.35 billion (2.64 trillion). The chief contributor to the company's telecoms unit's earnings was the robust sales of its flagship Galaxy smartphones.

In the wake of the exceptional quarterly performance reported by Samsung, and earlier by Apple too, Baik Jae-yer - who is the fund manager at Korea Investment Management - said that, as per the indications, the smartphone fight between the two companies "will go on."

Noting that "the smartphone market will expand this year to more mid-and low-end models that are affordable to the wider public," Baik said: "Rather than focus on market share, I'd point out the strong contribution of Samsung's handset business to earnings growth and margins."