In the second calendar quarter this year, Apple retained its long-standing title of most profitable consumer electronics company in the world. Earlier this month, Samsung posted unaudited earnings and estimated that its quarterly operating profit climbed to a record $8.3 billion. Apple reported its June-quarter earnings on Tuesday and revealed that quarterly net profit came in at $6.9 billion while its operating fell to $9.2 billion. Samsung did manage to widen its smartphone unit sales lead, however — an earlier report estimated that Samsung’s second-quarter smartphone shipments totaled a record 71 million units, crushing Apple’s June-quarter iPhone sales, which totaled 31.2 million units. It has now been eight months since Apple last launched new mobile devices, though, and the company is expected to release a number of new products this fall including a completely redesigned iPad and the highly anticipated iPhone 5S.
UPDATE: Samsung’s unaudited results include operating profit, not net profit, so the original claims made in this post were inaccurate. Apple posted a $9.2 billion operating profit in the June quarter, while Samsung’s operating profit was $8.3 billion. The headline and body of this post have been updated to correct an earlier error that compared Samsung’s operating profit to Apple’s net profit.
