Samsung Reports Record Profits

Bloomberg: Strong demand for its smartphones helped propel South Korea’s Samsung Electronics to record quarterly earnings. The largest consumer-electronics maker in Asia handily beat analyst expectations with a quarterly profit of 5.8 trillion won ($5.1 billion), up from 2.95 trillion won a year earlier.

The company’s mobile phone business more than doubled its earnings year-over-year. It sold 44 million smartphones during the period, three times as many as during the same quarter in 2011. “Sales of new models of smartphones, such as the Note, were better than expected,” said Daewoo Securities analyst James Song. “They have a good line-up of new products, so they will be able to keep the momentum alive for two or three quarters, at least.”