Samsung took 13 percent of global smartphone market profit

Samsung posted $1.57 billion in smartphone division's operating profit in the second quarter of this year, registering a 21.9 percent decline from the same period a year ago.

Samsung is not the market leader when it comes to this metric. Apple is far ahead of the pack. It posted an operating profit of $10.1 billion in the first quarter of this year which accounted for 83.4 percent of the industry's combined operating profit for Q1 2017. Apple saw a 79.8 percent increase in operating profit compared to the same period last year.

The data further reveals that Apple's operating profit ratio in relation to sales amounts to 30.7 percent. This is considerably higher than the 9.7 percent profit to sales ratio for Samsung.

Industry analysts are of the view that Samsung is having troubles in improving its profitability due to market saturation and margins that are generally shrinking. It will be interesting to see what steps the company takes in the following quarters to turn this metric around, after all, it's not like it doesn't want to see its operating profits climb.