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Seoul (dpa) - The rising sales of smartphones and the strong demand for consumer electronics brought the technology giant Samsung a strong profit jump in the first quarter of 2021.

The surplus climbed by 46.3 percent year-on-year to 7.14 trillion won (5.3 billion euros), said the South Korean company.

Sales rose to a quarterly record of 65.39 trillion won (48.7 billion euros).

Samsung Electronics is a market leader in smartphones, memory chips and televisions.

According to Samsung, the latest generation of its top smartphone model, the Galaxy S21, was particularly well received by consumers.

But sales of models for the mass market with good price competitiveness have also increased.

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Analysts assume that the Apple rival mainly benefited from the lower introductory price of the S21 series.

The South Koreans launched the series in January.

Compared to the previous models, the versions of the S21 were offered at significantly lower prices.

According to the company, 81 million Samsung branded cell phones were sold in the months from January to March, up from 67 million in the previous quarter.

The consumer electronics business, including televisions, was boosted by the fact that many people were spending more time at home because of the coronavirus pandemic. In the first quarter of this year, the demand for TV sets fell compared to the peak of the Christmas business, but compared to the first quarter of 2020, sales increased “because of the continued strong demand in the advanced markets”, according to a company release.

While Samsung posted significant profit increases in the IT and mobile communications (smartphones) and consumer electronics divisions in the first quarter, operating profit in the semiconductor segment fell by 15.5 percent to 3.37 trillion won despite solid sales of memory chips and increased sales. 5 billion euros).

Samsung, along with other semiconductor manufacturers, was affected by the cold disaster in February in the southern US state of Texas.

The unusually low temperatures caused large-scale power outages and hindered chip production there.

According to Samsung, the price decline for NAND memory chips was also reflected in the result.

These chips are mainly used in mass storage devices such as USB sticks and camera memory cards.

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For the second quarter, Samsung sees a different development in the individual sectors. In the case of semiconductors, the group expects an increase in profits “in view of favorable business conditions” for memory chips. This also includes the strong demand for servers and PCs. In contrast, Samsung expects a decline in both sales and profits in the mobile communications business, "as sales of flagship smartphones decline". In addition, there are supply problems with some parts of the device. For the second half of the year, however, the smartphone market is likely to continue to recover overall thanks to the increasing demand for devices with the new 5G mobile communications standard.

The release of the quarterly figures for the flagship company of the Samsung Group came a day after the family of the late ex-CEO Lee Kun Hee announced that they would pay inheritance taxes of more than twelve trillion won within the next five years.

It was initially unclear how Lee's shares in the group subsidiaries would be distributed among the heirs and whether part of the holdings should be sold.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210429-99-398675 / 4