Samsung just dropped its Q1 2025 earnings, and they came in hot. We’re talking a record-breaking KRW 79.14 trillion ($55.4B) in revenue—the highest quarterly number in the company’s history. Not bad for a company navigating a chip market that feels more unpredictable than your group chat on a Friday night.
Let’s unpack what’s going on under the hood.
While Samsung’s semiconductor division is still playing catch-up in the AI chip race, its Mobile Experience (MX) Business carried the quarter. With KRW 37 trillion in sales and KRW 4.3 trillion in profit, MX just posted its best numbers in four years. The MVP? The Galaxy S25 series, powered by—you guessed it—Galaxy AI. Turns out people really like phones that sound smart and take smarter photos.
But it’s not all sunshine and ultrawide lenses.
Samsung’s chip division—aka the Device Solutions (DS) unit—took a hit. Revenue slid to KRW 25.1 trillion, and profit dropped a whopping 42% from last year. Why? A mix of slumping HBM (high-bandwidth memory) sales, price erosion, and good old-fashioned geopolitics. Export controls on AI chips and customers holding out for the newer HBM3E tech have made the semiconductor streets rough.
And about those geopolitics…
Samsung is feeling nervous about Trump’s potential “reciprocal tariffs,” which are paused until July but could boomerang back hard, especially for countries like South Korea and Vietnam, where Samsung makes a lot of its smartphones and displays. The company even hinted it might shift production of TVs and appliances to dodge fallout.
Still, Samsung isn’t sitting back. It’s going full throttle on AI, pouring record R&D cash into 2024 and boosting spend by 16% in Q1 alone. The strategy? Double down on AI smartphones—Galaxy A is getting the “Awesome Intelligence” treatment—and roll out foldables with smarter AI experiences.
On the chip side, Samsung is hoping its upcoming HBM3E 12H lineup and 2nm Gate-All-Around (GAA) process will win back some love in the AI server space. But that’s going to be a climb, especially with SK Hynix flexing hard, snagging 36% of the global DRAM market share and leapfrogging Samsung for the first time, according to Counterpoint.
So yeah, Samsung’s sitting on a record quarter. But the bigger story? This is a pivot point. Smartphones are winning for now, but if Samsung can’t nail the AI chip game soon, it risks falling behind in the biggest tech race of the decade.
No pressure, right?
