Samsung Electronics saw third quarter revenues climb 10% from a year earlier, which was also a previous high, based on a favorable market for memory products as well as “robust” sales in its foundry and display businesses.
Memory saw a record in quarterly bit shipments and the company’s second highest revenue for DRAM, the company said Wednesday
Foundry was up due to strong sales globally, which displays rose on new products from major smartphones on the market. Samsung is the world’s largest chipmaker and the world’s largest phone maker. Samsung provides mobile OLED displays to Apple.
Samsung’s mobile business improved from the prior quarter based on strong demand for its new foldable models such as the Galaxy Z Flip 3 and Galaxy Z Fold 3, as well as low and mid-range smartphone, tablets and wearables. Also, the company’s networks business expanded in North America and Japan, with continued 5G growth in installations in the home base of South Korea.
Overall revenues for the quarter were almost 74 trillion Korean won, about $63 billion. The semiconductor business revenues reached 26 trillion Korean won, about $22 billion. The IT and Mobile devision reached 28 trillion Korean won, nearly $24 billion.
Samsung noted that a resurgence in the quarter of COVID-19 in major production countries and component supply issues created disruptions but the company said it “actively responded to DRAM demand by flexibly operating its product mix.” NAND saw server SSD demand recover with more investments by major server customers.
Demand for servers is expected to stay strong in the fourth quarter, affecting DRAM especially.
For 2022, Samsung said it is difficult to offer specific guidance due to COVID-19’s continued impact, but said server and PC demand are expected to be robust with new CPU adoption. The company will expand the portion of 15 nm DRAM and 128-layer V-NAND.
Samsung also said it will continue to strengthen market competitiveness with cost reductions in next-gen processes while expanding mass production of 14 nm DRAM and 176-layer V-NAND.
The foundry market is expected to remain tight in 2022 due to high silicon consumption for 5G and strong GPU-led demand for high performance computers.
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