The Korea Herald reported Sunday that Samsung Electronics is on track for quarterly operating profit above 100 trillion won for the first time. Three brokerages put the third-quarter figure near an average 107.7 trillion won. That is about $74 billion at the rate the paper used. It is up 20.3% from 89.4 trillion won in the second quarter.
The same note puts Device Solutions operating margin in a 72 to 75 percent band. DRAM operating margin, covering both high-bandwidth memory and conventional products, is seen above 80 percent. The paper cites estimates from DB Securities, Mirae Asset Securities, and BNK Securities. Those are brokerage forecasts, not Samsung’s own guidance.
Memory price gains are cooling on the quarter even as margins stay high. TrendForce expects DRAM contract prices to rise 13 to 18 percent on-quarter in the third quarter. That is a sharp slowdown from about 60 percent in the prior quarter. The Herald does not publish a separate LPDDR or phone DRAM ASP for September. It also does not name an Apple allocation share in this article.
HBM takes more DRAM capacity next year
Analysts tie the margin story to how capacity is being allocated. Samsung and rivals are putting more advanced DRAM lines into HBM and high-capacity server products. Less of that capacity stays on conventional DRAM. Server DDR5 demand is rising with AI data-center builds at the same time.
Kim Dong-won, head of research at KB Securities, expects HBM to take 40 percent of Samsung’s total DRAM capacity next year, up from 33 percent this year. Conventional DRAM share is expected to fall to 59 percent from 65 percent. Our earlier Samsung DRAM wafers and HBM squeeze note tracked the same Kim figures on wafer growth and the 52-week DDR5 lead time. Today’s Herald piece adds the profit and margin forecasts that sit on top of that capacity shift.
DDR5 lead times stretch to 52 weeks
Kim said lead times for high-capacity server DDR5 have stretched to as long as 52 weeks this month. Under normal market conditions the same lead time was around six weeks. The Herald quotes him saying the HBM-led reallocation prolongs shortages of conventional DRAM and pushes prices higher.
An unnamed industry source told the paper that past memory upcycles saw capacity expansion after prices rose, which eventually brought prices down. This time capacity is shifting toward HBM, so extra investment does not immediately refill conventional DRAM supply. The paper does not name that source.
What the Herald did not publish on phone DRAM
The Sunday report is a Samsung group profit story. It does not break out Mobile Experience operating profit for the quarter. It does not list a Q3 LPDDR5X contract price for smartphones. It does not say how much of Samsung’s DRAM output will go to Apple for the current iPhone cycle.
Those phone-side numbers have been covered separately on this site. Apple’s acceptance of a Samsung Q1 2027 memory quote near $2/Gb LPDDR5X is in our Q1 2027 memory quote brief. Smaller brands redesigning boards when allocation runs out appear in the small makers redesign note. Foundry share, which is a different Samsung business line, was the focus of yesterday’s SMIC and TSMC 2Q26 foundry ranking.
Phone buyers still feel the squeeze
Even with DRAM price gains slowing to 13–18% this quarter, conventional supply stays tight because HBM keeps taking wafer share. That is the structural point in the Herald piece. Phone makers that buy LPDDR and NAND still negotiate against that backdrop. The paper does not forecast a retail iPhone price change from these September estimates.
Samsung has not issued its own third-quarter results in this article. The 107.7 trillion won average is a brokerage consensus printed by The Korea Herald on Sep 27. Actual reported numbers may differ when Samsung files the quarter.
Photo: Apple
Source: The Korea Herald, Sep 27, 2026 (Jie Ye-eun); TrendForce DRAM price outlook cited in the same report; KB Securities (Kim Dong-won)
