Profits at Samsung surge, while shares at Apple fall

Samsung Electronics said its profits surged 76% in the last three months of 2012, helped by sales of its Galaxy smartphones, while shares at Apple have tumbled 12% as investors fret over whether the company could lose its dominance in the smartphone market.

Samsung's net income rose to a record 7.04tn won ($6.6bn; £4.2bn), up from 4.01tn won in the same period a year earlier, beating analysts' expectations.

Sales rose 19% over a year earlier to 56.06 trillion won and operating income jumped 89% to 8.84 trillion won.

Samsung, which overtook Apple as the top smartphone maker last year, said its operating profit from the division that makes and sells smartphones and tablets more than doubled to 5.44 trillion won in the fourth quarter, from 2.56 trillion won a year earlier.

Samsung did not provide data on the number of smartphones it had shipped, but analysts estimate it sold 63 million smartphones in the quarter.

However, figures were not so great for Samsung's greatest rival. Approximately $50bn (£32bn) was wiped off Apple's value on Thursday, after the biggest daily drop in the firm's stock in four years.

Flat profits and record quarterly revenue of $55bn were not enough to overcome disappointment over sales of the company's new iPhone 5.

Apple was unable to repeat its usual growth in profits, which were unchanged from a year earlier at $13.1bn.

The firm said late on Wednesday it had sold more iPhones (47.8 million) and iPads (22.9 million) in the final three months of last year than in any previous quarter, but investors had expected more.

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