Seoul,
South Korean technology giant Samsung Electronics achieved a net profit of $39.30 billion, 85.6 per cent more than in 2016 thanks to the boom in the memory chip industry.

The company also earned a gross operating profit of 56.2 trillion won, 83 per cent higher than the previous year, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

Its operating profit was 53.65 trillion won, a 83.4 per cent increase, supported by a turnover of 239.58 trillion won, which is 18.6 per cent higher than in 2016, Efe reported.

With respect to the fourth quarter of the year, the world’s largest memory manufacturer saw its net profit increase 72.9 per cent year-on-year to 12.26 trillion won.

Its operating profit was 15.15 billion won, a 64.3 per cent increase compared to the last quarter of 2016, and its sales totalled 65.98 billion won, a 23.7 per cent rise.

The company attributed the good performance in the fourth quarter to its component business unit, which manufactures the DRAM and NAND memory chips that have strengthened the company’s financial results throughout 2017.

Samsung said that “orders for high-performance memory products for servers and mobile storage were strong” during the October to December quarter.

The tech giant’s dominance in the memory sector, coupled with the high demand because of the rise of big data and the Internet of Things (IoT), has boosted the prices of this type of products and greatly benefited the company.