Korean giant Samsung Electronics, which yesterday rolled out a whole raft of new products at CES 2013, is expected to report record profits not just for the final three months of last year, but for 2012 as a whole. Figures predicted to be well over 80% up on than its previous performance records.
Driven by the success of its smartphones, the company is expected to have broken the KRW200tn barrier in 2012, making it the first Korean company to have passed that milestone.
It's estimated sales last year were KRW201tn (£117.5bn), up from its previous-record KRW165tn (£96.5bn) in 2011, itself a significant gain on 2010's KRW154.6tn (£90.4bn).
KRW56tn (£32.7bn) of those sales are expected to have been clocked up in the last quarter of 2012, with up to 65% of earnings being accounted for by smartphones such as the Galaxy SIII (above).
That's a gain of over 18% on the previous quarter.
Operating profit for the October-December 2012 period is being estimated at KRW8.8tn (just over £5bn), up almost 90% on the same three months in 2011, and 9% higher than the company's previous record, set in July-September 2012.
Operating profit for 2012 is expected to be just over KRW29.01tn (almost £17bn), shattering the previous record of KRW17.3tn (just over £10bn) set in 2010.
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