Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics released its finalized third quarter earnings report on Wednesday.<br />The company says.... it posted record quarterly profits... thanks to a strong performance by its semiconductor unit.<br />Kim Ji-yeon reports.<br /> <br />The South Korean smartphone and chip maker Samsung Electronics says it posted record operating profits of more than 15-point-four billion U.S. dollars during the July-to-September period.<br />That's a near-21-percent jump from the same period last year... and some 61-million dollars more than its provisional estimate released earlier this month.<br />The report also shows combined sales of 57-and-a-half billion dollars, up five-and-a-half percent on-year.<br />The lion's share of Samsung Electronics' earnings came from its chip unit... which recorded an all-time-high of nearly 12-billion dollars in operating profits.<br />The company's IT & Mobile Communications division posted moderate operating profits of around 2-billion dollars... while sales were at around 22-billion dollars.<br />Its consumer electronics division recorded operating profits of 491-million dollars.<br />Samsung Electronics projected record-high operating profits of around 57-billion dollars and combined sales of around 219-billion dollars for this year... although it also says fourth quarter earnings will be lukewarm <br />compared to Q3... as the memory chip market enters a period of seasonal weakness and prices of DRAMs and nand-flash memory chips decline .<br />The report also cites marketing costs in its smartphone business which continue to increase.<br />Kim Ji-yeon, Arirang News. <br /><br />
