Samsung’s net profit slid 18 percent in the second quarter as weakness in semiconductors and LCDs countered the electronics giant’s growing strength in smartphones.
Samsung, the world’s biggest manufacturer of memory chips, LCDs and flat-screen televisions, earned 3.51 trillion won (US$3.33 billion) in the three months ended June 30, it said yesterday in a regulatory filing.
Samsung earned 4.28 trillion won in the same period last year.
Samsung has suffered this year due to slack prices for electronic components amid oversupply and weak demand. Net profit slumped 30 percent in the first quarter amid declines in memory chip prices and reduced profitability in LCDs and TVs.
Second-quarter sales at the Suwon, South Korea-based company rose 4.1 percent to 39.4 trillion won from 37.9 trillion won a year earlier.
“We were confronted with a difficult business environment overall,” Samsun vice president Robert Yi said on an earnings conference call.
Global economic uncertainties persisted and consumer demand for products such as personal computers and televisions was “soft,” he said.
Yi said Samsung’s revenue gain was “mainly due to strong handset performance led by continuing success of our smartphones.”
Both operating profit and sales for its memory business fell as weak global PC sales affected demand for DRAM chips, the company said in a press release.
Samsung’s display panel business racked up an operating loss of 210 billion won, a reversal from a profit of 880 billion won the year before, with sales declining 9 percent as LCD prices fell.
Yi called the results in that sector “quite disappointing.”
The bright spot continued to be mobile phones. Revenues from its mobile communications business, which includes phones, rose 45 percent from the year before. Sales of mobile phones increased from the previous quarter on the back of the company’s flagship Galaxy S II smartphone.
Samsung, which ranks No. 2 in mobile phones behind Finland’s Nokia Corp, has sold more than 5 million units globally of the updated smartphone since it went on sale in late April.
Samsung expects demand for mobile phones to increase 15 percent in the second half of this year, driven by consumers upgrading to smartphones, it said in the release.
Shares in Samsung, which announced results before South Korea’s stock market opened, rose 0.8 percent to close yesterday at 844,000 won. The company’s stock price has declined 11 percent so far this year.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last