#SamsungProfitBeatsNvidiaApple

Samsung Electronics has achieved a profit figure unprecedented in the history of technology companies for a single quarter. According to preliminary data released on July 7th, the company expects an operating profit of 89.4 trillion won in the second quarter, approximately $58.4 to $58.6 billion, representing a nineteenfold increase compared to the same period last year.

What makes this result truly striking is not only that Samsung broke its own record, but also that it surpassed the single-quarter records of the world's two most profitable technology companies. Nvidia's highest quarterly profit earlier this year was approximately $53.5 billion, while Apple's peak at the end of last year was around $50.9 billion. It is stated that Samsung's effective profit, even excluding the approximately 10 trillion won allocated for performance bonuses, exceeds 100 trillion won.

The main driving force behind this result is that demand for memory chips for AI infrastructure has exceeded supply for the third quarter. DRAM and NAND contract prices jumped between forty and sixty-five percent in a single quarter, and Samsung is now requesting an additional twenty percent increase in DRAM prices for the third quarter. The company's chip division's operating profit margin exceeded seventy percent, surpassing even Nvidia and TSMC's margins for the same period. This indicates that Samsung has closed the throughput gap it has experienced in recent years, particularly in the high-bandwidth memory market, compared to its competitor SK Hynix, on a commercial scale. The full results report, to be released on July 30, will clarify the details of this chip mix.

On the other hand, the picture is different. The same price increases are reflected in costs for Samsung's mobile and appliance businesses, with profits in these divisions declining by approximately forty percent year-on-year. Some internal assessments indicate that the mobile division could face a risk of incurring an annual loss for the first time in its history in 2026, with core component costs exceeding forty percent of total device costs. In other words, Samsung is both the biggest winner and the biggest loser of these price increases; the same price hike appears as a profit in the chip division's books, but a loss in the mobile division's books.

The company also announced it will build new production facilities to meet the growing demand, but details such as location, timeline, and investment amount have not yet been shared. This news coincides with Samsung's planned ADR listing on Nasdaq on July 10th, creating another catalyst for investors to re-price the company's true value.

For those following the semiconductor sector and the Korean market via Gate, the key point is that this record profit figure is a strong signal confirming the robust and persistent demand for AI memory, but it also serves as an example of how this sharp increase in memory prices is creating cost pressure on other segments of the consumer electronics sector.