Samsung Electronics has just posted its financial report for the first quarter of this year. Head of Mobile Division (MX), TM Roh, is concerned that the said division may experience an annual loss for the first time. We’ll see what happens over the rest of the year, but at least Galaxy phones stayed in the black for Q1.
Samsung MX and Network Business Division earned KRW 38.1 trillion in consolidated revenue and KRW 2.8 trillion in operating profit during the first quarter.
Sales are higher than the year-ago quarter – Q1 2025 figures were KRW 37 trillion in revenue and KRW 4.3 trillion in profit. Still, it’s tough out there and Samsung managed to achieve single-digit profitability thanks to its product mix, which leans toward premium models and active cost optimization.
However, looking at the next three months, Samsung is expected to see a decline in revenue. In the second half of 2026, the MX division will continue to focus on driving flagship sales and strengthening its position in the foldables market (the rumored Galaxy Wide didn’t get a callout, but we can read between the lines).
As far as TM Roh’s concerns are concerned, this financial report estimates that the MX division will generate more revenue in 2026 than last year. However, there is no forecast of annual profits.
We turn to Device Solutions (DS) and – be careful, champagne corks are flying everywhere. DS generated revenue of KRW 81.7 trillion, reaching an all-time high. To put things in perspective, that’s an increase of 86% quarter over quarter! Operating profit is equally impressive at 53.7 trillion KRW – compare this to the operating profit of 1.1 trillion KRW reported last year.
The memory business, which is a part of DS, broke its quarterly sales record. This was thanks to high-priced products for the AI market. DS also began selling HBM4 and SOCAMM2 memory to Nvidia’s Vera Rubin. Rubin is the successor to Blackwell Architecture and the first product is expected to launch later this year.
In the second quarter, the memory division will begin delivering HBM4E memory samples to customers. It also plans to capture the nascent PCIe Gen6 SSD market again with a focus on AI infrastructure (these high-bandwidth SSDs are used for KV caching).
The memory shortage is affecting the entire electronics market – which in turn puts pressure on Samsung’s other divisions. Samsung Display Corporation (SDC) brought in KRW 6.7 trillion in consolidated revenue and made an operating profit of KRW 0.4 trillion on top of that.
There was less demand for small and medium display products – Samsung blames the usual seasonal effects for this (all flagships launched in Q1 were manufactured before then), but also higher memory prices have hit smartphone sales. However, the corporation reports “strong demand” for OLED gaming monitors – if you can’t upgrade your GPU, a new monitor is a good way to get a better image, we guess.
Good news for Samsung System LSI, the division responsible for Exynos chips and ISOCELL camera sensors – earnings increased due to strong chipset sales. For the upcoming quarter, LSI wants to increase sales of both chipsets and sensors for “volume-tier” smartphones. And in the last two quarters of this year, the division wants to expand its customer base to 200MP sensors and “ensure the victory of the flagship SoC design.”
Samsung’s foundry business saw lower earnings, which was again blamed on seasonal effects. However, work on the 1.4nm node is on schedule and Samsung is looking for new customers for its 2nm node. For the second quarter, the foundry business will look to boost earnings by increasing supplies of HBM4 dies.
You can check out the press release for details on Samsung’s other businesses such as Harman, Visual Display and Digital Equipment divisions.
Individual divisions have their ups and downs, but overall Samsung Electronics is in a great place – consolidated revenue of KRW 133.9 trillion is the highest level ever for the quarter. And this is a massive increase of 43% from the last quarter of 2025. Operating profit is also at an all-time high, reaching KRW 57.2 trillion.
For context, in Q1 2025 Samsung Electronics reported revenue of KRW 79.1 trillion and operating profit of KRW 6.7 trillion.