The situation for Samsung is a tad grim, as the South Korea-based company reported a 74 percent year-over-year decline in net profit during Q3. This marks Samsung’s fourth consecutive quarterly decline, and marks its lowest profit margin since the second quarter of 2011.
Profits during the quarter sat at $3.9 billion, right on par with Samsung’s previous guidance. Revenues fell 20 percent to $45 billion when compared to the same quarter last year. As for Samsung’s mobile business, which ships more handsets than Apple, it saw a 60 percent year-over-year decline and only one third of the net profit Apple saw during the same quarter.
Samsung says the drop in profits came from price cuts of older phones and “declined shipments” of high-end models. Going forward, the company thinks “new smartphone lineups featuring new materials and innovative designs, as well as a series of new mid- to low-end smartphones with strong competitive positioning on both hardware specifications and price,” will help get its business back to where it once was.
“High-end smartphone sales result was somewhat weak,” said Kim Hyun-joon, senior vice president at Samsung’s mobile communications business. “We will fundamentally reform our product portfolio.”