Samsung has revealed its profit forecast for the January-March period of 2017 which is expected to be the best financial quarter for the company in over three years.
Profits are expected to have increased by a gigantic 48% and the company says the profit for Q1 2017 was likely $8.8 billion, or 9.9 trillion won. The average forecast was 9.4 trillion won, and total revenue also rose 0.4% to 50 trillion won.
The good news for Samsung comes even in the wake of the explosive Galaxy Note 7 handsets and a political bribery and corruption scandal which is currently on-going in South Korea.
Anticipation of the tech giant’s good news also caused shares to hit to a record high of 2.134 million won towards the end of March, though actual sales figures are not expected to be released until the end of April.
Profits are expected to be even high in the April-June period due to the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S8, on April 21st. Even after the embarrassing recall of the company’s last flagship device, the Galaxy Note 7, the S8 and its new embedded Bixby AI technology could set a new first year sales record for the company.
Despite the problems with the exploding Galaxy Note 7, concerns may not have been as intense as originally though, a Reuters and Ipsos study found that 26% of American consumers would purchase a Samsung phone whilst 23% said that they would not. In this study 44% believed that Samsung were no different from any other phone company in regards to safety, and nearly 30% believed that Samsung offers more features than its competitors.
In the face of all of this bad press, the public doesn’t seem to have changed their mind on Samsung, and consumers remain loyal, share prices actually increased and the company saw a 50% increase in profits over the last 3 months of 2016 as well as the first three of 2017.
