Samsung reports record Q3

Samsung has reported an operating profit for the third quarter of this year of 10.16 trillion won ($9.6 billion) on the back of a 12 percent spike in its semiconductor division.

The Korean tech giant announced on Friday that sales for Q3 reached 59.08 trillion won ($55.6 billion), up 3 percent quarter on quarter. The vast majority of the sales came from Samsung's mobile division, which saw a modest 3 percent rise in sales up to 36.57 trillion won ($34.4 billion). Profits for mobile were 6.7 trillion won ($6.3 billion).

The organisation said in its presentation today that demand for handsets and tablets were up as we now enter peak season for demand of the devices. The company said it is seeing solid sales for its current line-up of smartphones, including the Note 3.

The semiconductor division of Samsung saw the biggest growth in the company, jumping 12 percent QoQ from 8.68 trillion won ($8.2 billion) in Q2 to 9.74 trillion won ($9.2 billion) in Q3. On a profit basis, the chip division saw a big jump, up 17 percent from 1.76 trillion won ($1.7 billion) to 2.06 trillion won ($1.9 billion) in Q3. Year on year, the division has doubled its profits.

Analysts had predicted that Samsung's chip business would pick up the slack for the slowing mobile division in Q3 as a result of flagging sales for the Samsung Galaxy S4.

For Q4, Samsung projected that there would continue to be strong demand for smartphones driven by LTE 4G subscriptions in North America and Korea.