In the midst of global difficulties, Samsung still achieved record revenue

Samsung Electronics expects first-quarter operating profit to grow 50.3% despite global supply chain difficulties, the South Korean tech giant said in the announcement.

The world’s largest smartphone maker forecasts first-quarter operating profit of about 14.1 trillion won ($11.6 billion), up from 9.4 trillion won in the same period last year. . Samsung does not provide details on the performance of its various components. The company is expected to announce the full results on April 28.

Analysts said the forecast could be boosted by strong smartphone sales, but warned of an expected profit decline in the memory chip division.

“The decline in the price of memory chips will be contained due to stronger-than-expected demand,” Kim Un-ho, an analyst at IBK Investment & Securities, said in a note.

Profit from Samsung’s mobile business is expected to grow 55.8% from Q4 to more than 4.1 trillion won, offsetting a 6% decline in profit, the report said. from your memory chip unit.

With memory chips now used in a wide range of devices and cloud servers – essential for remote working in times of pandemic – the sector has become less dependent on seasonal demand. for devices such as smartphones and laptops.

Last year, chip prices skyrocketed amid strong demand for use in personal devices and data centers, helping Samsung hit record annual revenue. Going forward, Kim forecasts the group will earn 60.5 trillion won in overall operating profit for 2022, up 17% year-on-year.

However, Samsung’s smartphone division has been struggling recently in its home country of Korea due to a pre-installed app called Game Optimization Service on the latest Galaxy S series phones.

Designed to tweak the system’s performance, consumers claim it actually throttled the speed of thousands of non-game apps.

The matter forced Samsung’s vice chairman, Han Jong-hee, to apologize at a shareholder meeting last month, and prompted nearly 2,000 consumers to sue in class action for 300,000 won each.

But sales of its latest Galaxy S22 series are likely to exceed one million units in South Korea on Friday in the first six weeks of release, selling at a 20% faster rate than the previous S21 version.

“It’s a remarkable feat considering the woes of the global supply chain,” Samsung said in a press release on Wednesday. Although the Covid-19 pandemic has devastated the economy around the world, it has helped many technology companies thrive.”

The world’s largest memory chip maker, Samsung Electronics has aggressively ramped up investments in its semiconductor business as the world battles a chip shortage that has affected everything from cars to cars. , from home appliances to smartphones and game consoles.

In November, they announced a new microchip factory in Texas with an investment of 17 billion won USD. The plant is expected to come into operation by the end of 2024.