Samsung announces record profits in teeth of patent war

Samsung posted record profits for the last quarter of 2012 on Friday, in the wake of another year of patent battles with main smartphone rival Apple Inc.

Samsung’s net profit increased by 75 percent to 7 trillion Korean won ($6.6 billion) in the fourth quarter of 2012, up from 4 trillion won in same quarter in 2011.

Samsung said that the growth was driven by strong sales of the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 2 smartphones, but also attributes its success to the popularity of its LED TVs.

Apple published its figures for last year on Thursday. By contrast its net profit in 2012’s last quarter was $13.1 billion, which although announced as record-breaking, was a modest increase from $13.06 billion in the same quarter the year before.

Its total actual revenue was below Wall Street expectations, at $200 million less than the predicted $54.7 billion. In response to the announcement Apple’s share price also went down by 12 percent.

Apple also reported that it sold a record number of iPhones (47.8 million) and iPads (22.9 million) in 2012.

Alluding to Samsung’s patent disputes with Apple, Robert Yi, senior vice president and head of investor relations at Samsung, said: “Despite uncertainties in Europe and concerns over the US fiscal cliff creating a difficult business environment, we did our best this quarter to achieve strong earnings based on a strategic focus on differentiated and high value-added products as well as our technological competitiveness.”

Samsung’s stock also fell by 2 percent after it predicted that demand for its technologies in developed countries would slow down in the first quarter of 2013.

Samsung surpassed Apple as world's largest vendor of smartphones in 2012, and now has 30 percent of the global share.