SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS company says it’s on course to record a record quarterly operating profit, likely driven by strong sales of high-end smartphones that offset weak semiconductor orders.

The guidance for Samsung’s third quarter earnings showed it was on track to report a record-high quarterly profit for a fourth straight quarter, despite legal tussles with Apple that resulted in a $1 billion compensation judgment in August.

But analysts said a rise in marketing spending will decrease the company’s profit in the October-December quarter and sustaining fat margins in premium mobile devices could be increasingly tough.

Samsung estimated in a regulatory filing that its July-September operating income nearly doubled to 8.1 trillion won (€5.6 billion) from 4.25 trillion won a year earlier.

The result, which is 21 percent higher than Samsung’s previous record high profit posted in the April-June quarter, was better than the market consensus of 7.6 trillion won, according to a poll of 26 analysts by FnGuide Inc., a financial information provider.

The world’s largest maker of mobile phones, memory chips and TVs estimated its quarterly revenue at 52 trillion won, up 26 percent from a year earlier and meeting expectations.

Shares of Samsung traded 0.4 per cent lower in Seoul. Samsung will announce its full quarterly results including net income and a breakdown for each division toward the end of this month.

Analysts believe Samsung’s mobile communications business that sells smartphones, media players and tablet computers generated almost 70 per cent of its operating profit in the last quarter.