Samsung continues trend of record profits; LG, HTC trail.

Three of the biggest Android manufacturers have just released their 3rd Quarter 2012 Financial Year Earnings revealing a bit of a story about what many of us already suspect.

At the top of the heap, Samsung posted strong results with total sales revenue reaching 52.18 trillion won in the quarter, up from 47.6 trillion last quarter and 41.27 trillion won in the same quarter last year.  Growth appeared to largely be driven largely by high-end smart phones.  Given Samsung’s successes of late and with phones like the awesome and common-on-the-streets Galaxy S3, is anyone really surprised?

Samsung also took the time to give us their outlook for the next quarter, predicting increased demand in smartphones and tablets driven by a range of factors including increased demand, emerging markets, new product launches, and year-end seasonal effects.  How about the rumoured Nexus 10?

Next up was LG with sales holding quite steady at 6.5 trillion won, on par with 6,6 trillion won last quarter and 6.9 trillion won in the same quarter last year.

LG’s outlook for the fourth quarter looked forward to increased peak season demand, with LG positioning itself amongst strong competition using “aggressive marketing activities for competitive products” (i.e. the Optimus G and Optimus Vu:2).  With the release of the almost certain to be announced next Monday LG Nexus, let’s hope those fourth quarter numbers look their best yet!

Sadly, HTC’s woes continued with sales of NT$70.2bn, down from NT$91.0bn won last quarter and NT$135.8bn in the same quarter last year.  Even more concerning is HTC expects revenues to continue to decline to NT$60bn in the fourth quarter despite Christmas season and its push into China and emerging markets.  With the release of the revamped HTC One X+ and eye-popping 1080p HTC J Butterfly (though we’re still eagerly waiting to see if it gets released here in Australia) we hope to see HTC’s sales trend the other way.

Before we round up this quarter and look forward to the next, we decided to do something a little different.  With all this talk of Korean Won and New Taiwan Dollars, we thought we’d do a little conversion of numbers into our favourite currency.

As you can see from the table above, LG and Samsung also disclosed mobile-only sales numbers helping us better compare their performance to HTC’s predominantly mobile-only business.  As expected, the numbers show Samsung’s near-phenomenal growth in mobile with LG and HTC trailing a fair way behind.

For further interest, we also tabled FY2012 Q3 comparative growth figures below.

Samsung’s crazy 91% growth in profit and 82% growth in mobile over the same period last year anyone?

With Christmas season coming up, and some amazing phones scheduled to come from each of the three manufacturers, I can’t wait to see some strong full year results for all of our favourite Android manufacturers out there!

*Please note that the numbers were put together last night after a few drinks, so we accept no responsibility for any inflation or deflation of numbers.