Samsung says the Galaxy S9 isn’t selling very well

By Sam Byford@345triangle 

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Samsung Electronics’ quarterly earnings are in, and as ever they’re right in line with guidance, meaning that the company’s run of record profits is at an end. Samsung made an operating profit of 14.87 trillion won ($13.3 billion) on sales of 58.4 trillion won ($52.1 billion); revenue was down 4 percent year on year.

According to Samsung, the drop in revenue can be put down to “softer sales of smartphones and display panels.” The company’s most important phone of the year, the Galaxy S9, went on sale at the end of the previous quarter, but Samsung describes its performance as “slow.” Earlier this month analysts predicted that it would be the worst-selling Galaxy S flagship phone since 2012’s Galaxy S3.

Samsung’s display business also had a rough quarter, with “weak demand” for flexible OLED panels as seen in products like the iPhone X, and LCD shipments falling in both price and quantity. The company does expect OLED demand to pick up in the second half of the year, and Apple’s reported plan to launch two new OLED iPhone models will likely help with that.

Bright spots include the TV division’s strong sales of premium models thanks to the World Cup, while Samsung’s major profit driver remains its semiconductor division — demand for NAND flash memory and DRAM chips isn’t going away any time soon. Samsung also says its image sensor business is growing due to Chinese companies using the chips in dual-camera smartphones.