Apple has been knocked off its perch as the largest maker of mobile phones and most profitable tech firm by its main competitor, Samsung Electronics.
The South Korean firm owes this jump to huge sales of its new Galaxy S8 smartphone and demand for its memory chips.
According to the firm, the report for the quarter to September is expected to maintain this boost and rise in profile; its best quarterly result in five years.
Operating profit is said to have soared a forecast-beating 72.9 percent from the previous year to $12.6 billion, way more than the projected forecasts of $10.6 billion for Apple.
“Samsung has surpassed its rivals for now but Apple usually sees little fluctuation in its profits whereas Samsung’s profits fluctuate largely on memory chip prices,” Greg Roh, a HMC Investment Securities analyst, told AFP.
He forecasts another record profit in the third quarter due to the increased and sustained demand for Samsung’s memory chips.
“The S8 has indeed helped get Samsung back onto its feet, hopefully putting the Note7 debacle behind it,” Bryan Ma, a technology industry analyst at IDC, said before the announcement.
“But we also have to keep in mind that a lot of Samsung’s momentum is from memory and displays too, so it’s not all about the S8, either,” he said, according to Bloomberg News.
“The components businesses drove significant earnings growth… thanks primarily to strong memory demand for high-density DRAMs and SSDs for servers,” the company said.
Samsung has been smarting from the failed Galaxy Note 7 smartphone that had to be recalled due to widespread reports of exploding batteries. This cost it both money and trust and played well into Apple’s hand with the launch of its iPhone 7.
Samsung is set to unveil its new Note device next month in New York.
