Samsung's Q3 profits are bad

Richard Lawler:

Confirming its own estimates from earlier this month, Samsung announced tonight that it accumulated an operating profit of $3.9 billion in Q3. That’s not a bad haul for most companies in the July to September period, but last year Samsung proudly celebrated a record profit of $9.6 billion and now it’s down to less than half that. Now the company is breaking down the reasons behind the drop, and everything starts with the flagship Galaxy S smartphones. Reuters notes that phones drove its growth over the last couple of years, but profits in that area dropped from 6.7 trillion Korean won last year, to 1.75 trillion in the same period this year.

It’s also fun to compare Samsung’s per-device profits to Apple’s: