While we were all expecting an exponential growth on Samsung’s side, we can only as a simple question: When will this growth stop? Not that I wish them any harm or anything, but considering that each quarter they establish a new record, one cannot help but wonder when the day in which this growth stagnates will come. The analysts of Samsung have proven to be quite predominantly correct about all of their predictions. Therefore, this prediction may contain more truth than we realize.
We all remember the great final quarter of 2012 that Samsung had. All those things considered, Samsung is said to do even better this year. According to the analysts from Counterpoint Research, the estimates for the first quarter are quite high. Samsung is expected to sell around 25 million phones each month of this year, thus leaving them with a 70+ million sales in Q1 alone ( which will represent their new record, defying even the lower seasonal demand ).
Over the two full months that have passed this year, Samsung’s market share rose up to 35% ( from the previous 32% at which it was in the final quarter of last year ). The main rival, Apple, is also sitting on a 21% ( bigger than the previous 17% ). LG saw some small gains as well, it being at 4.3% ( from the old 4% ) and is currently behind the Chinese makers of ZTE with their 4.6% and Huawei with 4.4%.
The predicted record sales and rising market share leads analysts to believe Samsung will post an operating profit of around 7.7 billion dollars. When the full Q1 report comes out we will get some concrete numbers, plus the final look at how the Galaxy S III performed on the market before the S IV took over.
In this case as in many, only time will tell whether or not Samsung establishes a new record or not in its sales this first quarter. Until then, these remain just rumors, but in Samsung’s case, most of the rumors ended up being true.
