Samsung overtakes Apple as top smartphone manufacturer
1 min read
Samsung Electronics overtook Apple as the world's top smartphone manufacturer in the period between July and September, with a 44% increase in shipments.
Profits from Samsung's telecoms division more than doubled from a year earlier to a record 2.5trillion won ($2.2billion) and accounted for 60% of the South Korean company's total profit.
According to research firm Strategy Analytics, Apple's iPhone sales fell by 16% to 17.1million in Q3, while Samsung had 23% of the global smartphone market – nine points more than Apple. The analyst believes that Apple sold fewer phones in the third quarter due to customers holding off buying iPhones until the October launch of the iPhone 4S.
Robert Yi, head of Samsung's investor relations, believes that the company's Q4 earnings could be even better than Q3, boosted by one off gains from its $1.4bn sale of its hard disk drive business to Seagate Technology. "I am cautiously optimistic on the fourth quarter outlook at this point," said Yi. "Looking ahead into the fourth quarter, when industry demand is traditionally at its peak, Samsung expects sales of mobile devices to remain strong and flat panel tv shipments to increase."
