Samsung is expected to post its best second quarter results for four years, despite its lack of immunity from the smartphone industry’s current struggles.
Analysts believe quarterly revenues to have increased from 12.57 trillion won to 14.46 trillion won for the three-month period, with demand for its components – and memory chips especially – offsetting any decline in handset revenues.
Chip revenues are likely to have increased by 49% to 10.3 trillion won, fuelled by demand for consumer electronics and for data centre server equipment, especially among major cloud providers.
Smartphone sales
However, the Korean giant’s mobile business is thought to have fallen by 17% to 2.7 trillion won over the period in question, with shipments totalling between 61 and 68 million units.
Geopolitical challenges, lockdowns in China, and inflation are having an impact on consumer demand, tempering optimism that 2022 would see the market rebound after the impact of global lockdowns, economic uncertainty, and an industry-wide component shortage (opens in new tab) that had all seen sales fall in 2020 and 2021.
One analysis suggested that overall shipments fell by 11% during the first three months of 2022, with the aforementioned issues compounded by traditionally sluggish seasonal demand.
Nonetheless, Samsung remains the world’s leading smartphone maker, ahead of Apple and several Chinese manufacturers. Its wide portfolio of devices mean it has a significant interest in multiple tiers of the market, including the premium segment, and it will be optimistic of a rebound in the future as 5G becomes more widespread.
