Samsung’s phones are almost as profitable as its chips now, with flagships shining brightest of all

Samsung is out with yet another bittersweet financial report, generating higher total revenues but lower profit scores in Q3 2024 compared to the previous quarter. If we extend the comparison to the same July-September timeframe of last year, the multifaceted tech giant can certainly be pleased with its great progress across the board, jumping from a quarterly revenue of KRW 67.40 trillion and an operating profit of under 2.5 trillion won to over 79 trillion won earned and a net gain of KRW 9.18 trillion.

Samsung’s foldable and S24 series sales are expected to remain “solid”

Of course, Samsung is not confirming or denying my suspicion, choosing to focus on the “sequential” improvements of its mobile division and anticipating further growth in both sales and profits during Q4 2024 (compared to Q3 2024). “Various sales promotions” around the holidays are expected to contribute to another “solid” quarter for “AI smartphones”, with flagship models looking at an especially solid “double-digit” boost in shipments.

It feels important to note that Samsung is carefully avoiding hyperbolic language to both describe the recent sales results of its smartphones and predict their future performance, which strongly suggests modest growth (at best) is on the horizon.

Galaxy tablets, smartwatches, and wireless earbuds, meanwhile, are forecasted to improve their sales figures and profitability in Q4 2024 and 2025, but Samsung is keeping things even vaguer regarding the expected growth rates of these product categories.

Memory chips are down, mobile displays are up

Universally considered for a very long time (and with very good reason) Samsung’s fattest cash cow, the DS (Device Solutions) division is… a slightly humbler moneymaker now, yielding a profit of KRW 3.86 trillion ($2.8 billion) between July and September of this year.

That’s massively down from the 6.45 trillion won profit reported in Q2 2024 for Samsung’s memory chip-making business, but it’s obviously also a huge improvement over the KRW 3.75 trillion losses of Q3 2023. Looking ahead to the final quarter of the year, Samsung expects the general “demand trends experienced in the previous quarter to continue”, which means that mobile chip sales could stay “relatively soft”, possibly leading the company’s DS division to a rare lower profit number than the MX department.

The Samsung Display Corporation (SDC) division, meanwhile, managed to improve its revenue and profit figures compared to Q2 2024 thanks primarily to the “flagship product launches of major mobile customers.” That probably means Apple, which unfortunately also means that Samsung’s mobile display business may not be able to sustain this growth trend for very long. 

All in all, Samsung is not ready to make any firm predictions as far as its total revenue and profit scores for Q4 2024 and 2025 are concerned, with everything from memory chips to smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, and displays facing macroeconomic uncertainties that could end up hurting the tech giant’s bottom line to a degree that’s essentially impossible to assess at the moment.