Samsung's Q1 earning report is out revealing another slight decline in profit, mainly due to weaker demand for high-end smartphones. The South Korean company said that the operating profit dipped 3.3 percent year-on-year to 8.49 trillion Korean won ($8.2bn) in the January-March period.
Financial results were marginally better than guidance provided by the company earlier this month. They were also inline with analysts' average prediction of an 8.4 trillion won operating profit. As far as sales are concerned, the figure stood at 53.68 trillion won, a 3 percent increase year over year.
Samsung's mobile division recorded an operating profit of 6.43 trillion won ($6.2 billion). While this is slightly lower than the operating profit (6.51 trillion) that the world's largest phone maker reported a year ago, it's 18 percent more than the figure reported in the previous quarter.
An important point to note here is that sales of the Galaxy S5, Samsung's latest flagship that arrived earlier this month, do not factor into the company's Q1 results. The company expects better earnings in the next quarter mainly due to expected strong sales of the flagship, which outperformed launch day sales of its Galaxy S4 predecessor.
Samsung's earning report comes less than a week after it's chief competitor Apple reported that the company sold 43.7 million iPhones, much higher than the expected 38 million figure and a record for the first quarter.