14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung has finished inspecting its financial performance during the second quarter and it looks like its finances haven't been doing so well, despite what one might call a very successful performance on the mobile market.
Since a quarter of a year lasts three months, one can always expect IT companies to start releasing financially-concerned press releases periodically.
In this instance, it is Samsung that has taken its turn at doing its duty during what one might call the earnings season.
Apparently, the outfit has been performing very well on the mobile market, but its success has been practically undermined by losses in other endeavors.
While the sales of smartphones and other mobile devices actually quadrupled compared to the same period of the previous year, the 19.2 million unit figure drowned in the poor performance on the TV market.
Overall, the profits of the second quarter fell to 3.7 trillion won, which corresponds to $3.5 billion, and this figure is 26% lower than the one of Q2 2010.
Semiconductors contributed to this outcome, but the main culprit behind the weak financial showing was the low amount of flat screen TV panel shipments.
Fortunately, this did not lead to an outright revenue drop, since the mobile side of things did enable a small boost of 2.9%, with 39 trillion won ($36.7 billion) being the end result. Still, this revenue growth can be considered modest at best.
All in all, the main upside to the underwhelming period was the fact that Samsung at least managed to catch up somewhat with Nokia. The latter is, right now, the most successful maker of handsets.
One could mention that Samsung's financial results contrast sharply with the ones that OCZ attained. While a financial loss was still incurred because of purchasing Indilinx, among other things, revenues actually soared compared to those of the previous year's same period (Q1 FY 2012, ended May 31).