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Looks like Samsung had a great year in 2011 and really, was anybody surprised? During an earnings call today, the South Korean company reported that they were able to hit $4.72 billion in operating profit and $42 billion in sales for Q4 of 2011, lining up with the company’s previous estimate earlier this month.
This is an all time high for Samsung who’s numbers represent a 76% increase in profits over 2010’s holiday season reflecting a high demand for their smartphones totaling a record 35 million shipments (roughly 40% of their total sales) and their flourishing semiconductor business which pulled in $2 billion. Samsung’s television business did pretty well as well with a 20% increase from the previous year, bringing in $7.6 billion.
Samsung’s senior vice-president Robert Yi said in a statement,
“Despite intensified competition amid the global economic slowdown, our telecommunications businesses continued to post solid earnings with an enhanced line-up of high-end smartphones, resulting in higher average selling price.”
That’s because, no matter how bad things get, people gotta have their Android smartphones. No longer a luxury — it’s become a necessity. Let’s see if Samsung can do it all over again with the Galaxy S III.
[Via Reuters]
When do we get the Galaxy Nexus II? Give me a smaller screen and 12 MP Camera please! (Literally only two gripes about the phone)
Smaller Screen??? That’s Absurd!!! I Bite My Thumb At You Sir! Good Day.
Once you got 4.6″, you can’t go back.
And 12MP would be ok I guess, but honestly, if you ever want to take real photos you should be using something better than a point and shoot… 5MP is good enough for web photos.
LOL
“Despite intensified competition amid the global economic slowdown, our telecommunications businesses continued to post solid earnings with an enhanced line-up of high-end smartphones, resulting in higher average selling price.”
Competition? Ya right.
Higher average selling price? I wonder why.
When smartphone manufacturers and carriers are in bed together the result is price fixing and an artificial need for subsidies with 2 yr contracts. It is no surprise both the carriers and manufacturers are reporting record profits.
How about you get rid of subsidies and contract requirements and let the free open market really work. Then and only then is there TRUE competition and only then will we see the free market and competition result in a drop in prices(for both the price of the phone and the voice/data plan.) High-end smart-phones would cost 200-$300 OFF CONTRACT. Sadly, as long as the carriers and manufactures are in bed together then contracts will always be a requirement and full retail for phones will continue to be 500-$700.
I’m surprised cable providers and LCD/LED HDTV makers didn’t think about subsidizing large screen TVs. You sign a 2 yr cable contract, pay an outrageous monthly bill and get an HDTV subsidized for around 2k on contract, 5-10k off contract. The price of HDTVs would never have dropped if they had tried pulling that price fixing scheme. Lucky for us, I guess they weren’t smart enough to trick the consumer in that segment.
Carriers like MetroPCS and T-mobile with their Value Plans may be the early start to the end of this price fixing scheme. (I forgot, the Value Plans require a contract too)
Can’t wait for the day when the carriers get investigated and this price fixing comes to light. I have no doubt they are engaging in it.
tinfoil hats on – quickly!
Sounds like a problem restricted to the U.S. We’re talking world wide here…
Free market is a good idea, but it has to be controlled even the U.S. is moving away from Adam Smith’s believe (that a free market will always balance out). Sadly it doesn’t, because people are greedy and screw everyone they can.
But as long as you mean to remove hardware substitution by signing a contract, then this might change, however, then people will just be forced to buy cheaper phones. Not many people can affod a $600+ phone, this would especually hurt Apple. I have my doubts that prices of high-end smartphones will drop to only $200 off contract. Because otherwise you would even now find them offered cheaper on eBay, where many Asian wholesellers list phones, they could easily undercut the western sellers and create economies of scale; if the hardware has such high margins on it.
But who knows maybe that would be the solution.
Smartphone prices are already dropping a Palm Treo cost $700-800 when it was released, now the Gnex costs $600, 3 years from now the top phones will cost $450-500. The same already happened to cellphones, I remember when my dad bought the Nokia 8100 when it was brand new, it had a price tag of 1,200 Swiss Francs, which at that time was about USD 1,000.
…well,I’ll be giving them some more $…when the GALAXY S3 releases…I’m just being honest.
I’ve contributed to their profit in 2011 after having switched from HTC (which I’ve been using since 2006).
my gnex is my first samsung phone after years with moto.
i have to say, im impressed with the overall quality and design.
I’ll take both money and bitches.
$42 billion in sales and only$ 4.72 billion in profits? GM must be suffering. How long can they continue on those margins? Dell got along well with razor thin margins for awhile; then cheap PCs and volume proved to be their undoing. It’s only a matter of time ’til it starts to hurt.
This result is for Samsung Electronics not Samsung Group. Samsung Group had a revenue more than $220B in the last year.
Need to share their profits with their call center employees