Samsung Is World’s Leading Smartphone Maker (LON: SMSN)

Samsung Electronics has overtaken Apple as the world’s leading smartphone maker, according to numbers released for the July-September period.  Samsung’s sales have skyrocketed since the company entered the smartphone market last year thanks to a sleek production system that quickly brings new products to market.  The company has forecast strong sales for the current quarter in a clear warning to its competitors.
Kim Hyun-joong, a fund manager at Midas Asset Management, said, “In the handset division, Samsung has no real rival models to challenge its products except for the iPhone 4S.
Apple and Samsung will continue to dominate the market in the fourth quarter.”  Midas Asset Management owns Samsung shares.
Shipments of smartphones increased 44% from the previous quarter to 27.8 million units, nearly four times the amount shipped a year ago   The profits from the company’s telecoms division more than doubled from a year ago to 2.5 trillion won ($2.2 billion) and accounted for around 60% of Samsung’s total profit.  The increase in profits offset a plunge in earnings from its memory chips division.
Apple sold fewer phones in the third quarter, missing expectations for the first time in a year.  Apple’s iPhone sales decreased by 16% to 17.1 million units in the third quarter, as customers resisted purchasing iPhones until the October launch of the newest version of the device.  Samsung captured 23.8% of the global smartphone market in the third quarter, beating Apple by 9 points.
Samsung said its fourth-quarter earnings could be more impressive than the third, heightened by one-time gains from a $1.4 billion sale of the company’s hard disk drive division to Seagate Technology.  The company released an earnings statement stating, “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.”