Samsung's profit leaps and it takes 2011 smartphone top spot
Korean giant was market leader in high end handsets last year, but lost the lead to Apple in the fourth quarter
Published: 27 January, 2012
READ MORE: Financial | Samsung | Handset
As expected, Samsung enjoyed a healthy fourth quarter profit leap on the back of smartphone growth. Its Q4 profit was up 17% year-on-year, but researchers believe it ceded its global smartphone lead, achieved in the third quarter, back to Apple because of the success of the iPhone 4S.
Strategy Analytics' latest handset figures say that Apple shipped 37m smartphone in the fourth quarter, giving it global market share of almost 24%, while Samsung's sales rose to 36.5m and Nokia's fell to 19.6m. The total smartphone segment grew by 54% year-on-year to 155m units. In the second quarter, both Apple and Samsung overtook previous leader Nokia, with Apple narrowly in the lead, and in Q3, the Korean giant grabbed the top spot.
For the year as a whole, Samsung is believed to have sold more smartphones than Apple or anyone else, and a record 300m handsets overall. Strategy Analytics says it had almost 20% smartphone share for the full year, while Apple had 19%.
In its fiscal fourth quarter, Samsung said its smartphone success compensated for losses in its flat panel unit. It reported net profit of KRW4 trillion ($3.6bn), up from KRW3.42 trillion a year earlier and slightly ahead of analyst forecasts. Sales were up 13% to KRW47.3 trillion.
"They have such a good product line from top to bottom," Kim Chang Yeul, an analyst at Mirae Asset Securities, told Bloomberg, pointing out that the smartphone market is increasingly converging around the top two players - although Nokia has offered some hints of a comeback with its first WP7 launches. "The economic slowdown won't be much of an issue for their phone sales. Only Samsung and Apple phones are selling these days," added Kim.
Samsung's full year net income was down 15%, however, to KRW13.7 trillion, on sales up 6.7% to KRW165 trillion, a record.
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