Samsung has reported a blockbuster quarter with over 50 million smartphones being shipped by the Korean giant. Samsung has bet big on Android and they have went on to become the largest manufacturer of cellphones on the planet. Samsung’s numbers of course gets a boost with the release of the Galaxy S3 in the last quarter.
The smartphone business for Samsung has made a profit of $5.9 billion in the last quarter, which is huge and presumably more than what Apple made from the iPhone in the last quarter. For Samsung the figures are an astounding 79% higher than the same period last year.
Android has been a runaway hit in countries like India where the platform has seen over 500% growth in the last one year. With maximum Android offerings at various price points, Samsung leads the pack. Samsung is due to enter the US markets with the S3 shortly and that might show a positive affect on their Q3 earnings as well.
Samsung’s total mobile phones shipment is a little over 95 million and the next best is 80 million odd by Nokia. However the high margin smartphone play is where Samsung has majority of its business now. Rumors have also suggested that Apple might pre-pond the release of the 6th gen iPhone to compete better and get its numbers up. While that may or may not be true, it sure remains a fact that the upcoming iPhone would be Apple’s most important release since the original iPhone in 2007.
Apple defined the new era of smartphones in 2007 and the competition has caught up with the same and went beyond Apple’s domain w.r.t. hardware and features. It is hard to predict what Apple would innovate to take a significant lead, they sure have work to do on catching up with large screen sizes and slimmer / lighter designs.