Industry sources in South Korea believe that Samsung is going to announce its earnings guidance for the first quarter of the year next week. They expect that the guidance will beat forecasts as earnings are likely to be buoyed by the continued stellar performance of Samsung's chip business.
Samsung's operating profit for the first quarter of 2017 is expected to come in at 10.1 trillion won $9 billion which remains a record that has not been breached since the third quarter of 2013.
Over the past few quarters, the chip business has continued to account for a significant chunk of the company's earnings. Of the 9.2 trillion won in operating profit that Samsung posted in Q4 2016, 4.9 trillion won was generated by the chip business.
While the company's chip business is expected to drive growth in this quarter, the mobile division may not show significant improvement in its performance, considering the fact that sales of the Galaxy S7 would have slowed down in anticipation of the Galaxy S8 and there was no Galaxy Note 7 to hold down the fort in the high-end segment.
