Samsung just reported its best quarter ever, and your Galaxy S26 had almost nothing to do with it. The South Korean giant posted 133.9 trillion KRW ($90 billion) in Q1 2026 revenue, up 43% from the previous quarter and roughly 70% year over year. Operating profit hit 57.2 trillion KRW, an eightfold increase that crushed both analyst estimates and Samsung's own full-year 2025 profit of 43.6 trillion won. The engine room is the Device Solutions division, which pulled in 81.7 trillion KRW in revenue. The Memory Business set a new quarterly sales record, riding the AI data center boom that has constrained supply and driven up memory prices across the industry.
Samsung is now the first company to mass-produce HBM4 and SOCAMM2 memory for NVIDIA's Vera Rubin AI platform, locking in its position as a critical supplier to hyperscalers racing to build out AI infrastructure. The company also shipped PCIe Gen6 SSDs as scheduled.
First HBM4E samples go out in Q2.
"Memory is firmly establishing its independent position as the deciding factor in the success or failure of AI infrastructure," said Jeongku Choi, a research analyst at Counterpoint Research. Samsung shares are up roughly 90% year to date.
The Galaxy phone story is different. The MX division, which covers Galaxy phones, reported 38.1 trillion won in revenue, a 30% sequential increase driven by premium device sales and cost-cutting. But operating profit dropped 34.88% compared to last year. The initial launch boost is fading, and Samsung expects revenue to dip in the second quarter. The company plans to introduce new A-series devices and push harder on foldables later in 2026 to stabilize the mobile business. Its foundry arm is also preparing to ramp up 2nm chip production for mobile products in the second half of the year.
Samsung expects server memory demand to remain strong through the second half as hyperscalers accelerate AI adoption and agentic AI workloads grow. Counterpoint's Choi summed it up: "We expect the next quarter to be better than the first, and we anticipate 2026 to be the best year for Samsung yet."
