Last year definitely put Samsung in an awkward position economically speaking. The sales revenue exceeded everyone’s expectations in Samsung electronics department especially the IT department. The smartphone market lost over 10% of its sales in Q3 2018 thanks to all the trouble spelt by Chinese manufacturers overthrowing the old players in mainstream markets. 2018 was an eventful year considering the economical standpoint of major brands. Over 52% of all smartphones shipped came from Chinese manufacturers while Huawei overtook Apple in terms of sales.
Today Samsung officially announced their Q4 2018 earnings and the statistics do not look good. As far as the overall sales numbers are concerned, there has been an improvement at a fractional level which summed up to about $58.6 Billion over $58.1 Billion of Q4 2017. That accounts for only a 1% year on year growth which is not really considered ideal. The numbers have been going down throughout 2018 for Samsung and they were not able to get any positive impact on sales lately. The release of their first ever 8K TV and Galaxy Note 9(Review) did very little to help the cause as the numbers keep on sinking.
The sales profit in Q4 2017 summed up to $15.6 Billion while Q4 results show a 14% decline in operating profits making up only $13.45 Billion. Samsung IT’s success in the mid-range smartphone market proved to be a huge question mark thanks to the increasing competition in the budget device category. Samsung also talked about how the Galaxy Alpha series changed its direction by making a name for itself and following its own path away from the Galaxy S lineup. As 2019 comes to a start with Samsung planning quite a few things like the first ever 5G device and with the Galaxy S10 promising a new trend for flagships we may expect them to get back on track sooner than later. 2018 was in a way a leap year for Samsung with only marginal improvements over the same design of 2017 and it seemed evident that they were, in fact, playing for the long shot. 2019 brings a ton of opportunities for Samsung to regain the top spot and lead the modern electronic world.
