Samsung Posts Record Quarterly Profit Powered by Smartphones

(Reuters) -- Samsung Electronics Co, the world's top technology firm by revenue, reported a record quarterly profit on Friday, aided by its best-ever sales of smartphones and one-off gains.

The South Korean firm reported a 5.3 trillion won ($4.72 billion) operating profit for the October-December quarter, broadly in line with its earlier estimate of 5.2 trillion won.

That was up 76 percent from 3.0 trillion won a year ago and 25 percent higher than the 4.25 trillion won made in the preceding quarter.

Samsung trails Nokia in mobile phones, and competes with Sony Corp and LG Electronics Inc in TVs, Toshiba and Hynix in chips and LG Display in displays.

Shares in Samsung, also the world's top TV maker, have climbed 18 percent over the past three months and hit a life-time high of 1.114 million won this week, outperforming a 3 percent gain in the KOSPI over the same period. ($1 = 1121.9000 Korean won)