Samsung Group sells chemical assets to Lotte Group for $2.6 bln

Net profits rose 29.4 percent to 5.46 trillion won ($4.8 billion).

Also mentioned was that operating profits increased 500 billion won ($440.6 million) from Q2 due to a favorable exchange rate. On the other hand, profits from its once-enviable smartphone business continue to slide, even though sales are doing fairly well. The company has promised to return between 30 and 50 percent of its annual free cash flow to shareholders over the next three years.

Samsung announced earnings of up to $45.1 billion in the third quarter report of 2015.

It said the won’s weakness against the US dollar led to a 800 billion won gain during the July-September period.

REUTERS Students try out Samsung Electronics products at the company’s headquarters in Seoul, South Korea.

“The ongoing and growing success of Samsung’s component business is not surprising because the company has built a strong presence in several key areas, from chips, display panels, flash memory and more”, Bob O’Donnell, founder and chief analyst at Technalysis Research, told CNBC by phone.

The early simultaneous launch, expected to be held in January 2016, as reported by CNet.com, is seen as a move to pit the Galaxy S7 with Apple’s iPhone 6 and ramp up the competition for the biggest slice of the high-end smartphone consumer demographic. There’s a reason why Apple takes home nearly all of the profit in the smartphone business, and it’s because it’s the only company that isn’t being eaten alive by cheap-but-competent low-end and midrange models. But that will not help profit.

On Tuesday, Apple forecast another record holiday quarter aided by resilient iPhone demand as well as converts from Google Inc.s Android software, which drive most of Samsungs devices.

As for the curved edge variants of the flagship smartphone from Samsung, they have done very well this year and in fact, the S6 Edge was in a few areas more popular than its vanilla sibling with standard bezels.

“Samsung’s top priority is to save costs.Average workers with mediocre performance are being advised to leave the company with a sizable compensation”, one official said”.

In order to sway customers and increase the mojo of its phones, Samsung plans a global expansion of its Samsung Pay mobile payment system, an exclusive service for the latest Galaxy phone users.