Samsung Electronics has posted its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2014, and the news looks less than convincing. The company made some 5.29 trillion Won (about RM158.87 quadrillion) in profit, although that was down from the 8.31 trillion Won (about RM249.56 quadrillion) earned last year. This stands in stark contrast with its nearest rival Apple who yet again broke profit records on sales of its iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
Sales of Samsung mobile devices were slow, and saw shipment of smartphones drop to 74.5 million devices, down from 86 million last year, in the fourth quarter. A number it shared with Apple as both companies were tied for the top spot among global smartphone vendors.
Slow sales from the mobile division were propped up by components sales like processors and RAM. Speculation has it that the situation is likely to have fuelled Samsung’s decision to switch the upcoming Galaxy S6 smartphone from Qualcomm chips to the cheaper homegrown Exynos processor.
Samsung has been struggling to deal with competition appearing in the low- to mid-range mobile devices market with the appearance of many new Chinese manufacturers. While these companies, like Xiaomi and Oppo, do not share the same large global presence as the South Korean giant, they have managed to gobble up huge portions of the market in key countries like China.
Despite this, the company is hoping to see improvements in 2015 by tapping into expanding LTE services. Although the company says that the first quarter of each year traditionally sees a dip in demand for smartphones and tablets; and will mainly be focusing on new product lines like the Galaxy A series.
[Source: Samsung Tomrrow, Phonearena; via: The Verge]
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