Samsung published its third-quarter financials yesterday, and results are mixed. Although profits and revenue are up (both year over year and quarter over quarter), the mobile division continues the decline set last quarter. Interestingly, that's not as a result of sales, but rather increased marketing costs and unfavorable currency developments. Nonetheless, it expects those mobile earnings to decrease further next quarter, even as smartphone shipments rise.

I wish Samsung's financials were more detailed than this.  CE= Consumer Electronics, IM=IT & Mobile, DP=Display Panel, DS=Device Solutions. All numbers in trillions of KRW.

Samsung actually saw a new quarterly high in Q3, mostly because of the company's memory sales, improved memory yields, TV sales, and OLED sales. With most of the company's money coming from that semiconductor business, it expects to see weaker earnings next quarter as a result of seasonable declines.

The semiconductor business turned a bit over a $12.14 billion profit, driven primarily by increased demand for NAND and DRAM, though it explicitly expects to have more of a problem with its memory sales in the fourth quarter, due to a predicted market glut. Samsung's camera sensors are also typically 2nd best compared to Sony, but they're good enough now to drive record results for the company. It even expects them to be a significant contributing factor for profit in 2019.

Consumer electronics are up both year over year and quarter over quarter, mostly due to QLED TV sales, which have tripled over the last year, and it's among the few divisions the company expects to see gains from next quarter, as TV and home appliance demand increases.

Samsung's third-quarter IT & Mobile Communications (read: phone) profits are always on the lower side in Q3, and at 2.22 trillion KRW (~$1.98 billion) that's a decline both quarter over quarter, year over year, and the lowest numbers Samsung has seen since Q1 2017. Interestingly, this isn't a result of a decline in flagship sales, but rather mid and low-end devices.

The company expects phone sales to rise for Q4/the end of the year, but since those late-year sales require correspondingly higher marketing costs, profitability won't be as high. 5G hardware (likely not consumer facing) is also expected to ship to customers (read: not you) in the fourth quarter.

In further projections, Samsung expects a seasonably weak Q1 2019, with a later rise off of memory sales.

Source: Samsung