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Seoul, Apr 14: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. posted a 25 percent drop in quarterly operating profit on Friday, hit by sliding margins in memory chips and mobile phones.

Samsung, the world's biggest maker of memory chips, earned 1.61 trillion won ($1.67 billion) in operating profit for the quarter ended March 31, compared with 2.15 trillion reported a year ago. It missed a 1.79 trillion won profit forecast by 12 analysts surveyed by Reuters.

But net profit rose to 1.88 trillion won from 1.5 trillion due to a 700 billion won write-down to support its credit card affiliate, Samsung Card, in the first quarter of last year.

The outlook for the current quarter is grim as prices for flash memory chips, popular in hot-selling digital cameras and music players, are likely to slide further before recovering in the second half on seasonal demand.

Shares in Samsung, the country's biggest stock with market value of $97.5 billion, fell 4.4 percent in the first quarter, trailing the broader market's 1.4 percent fall.

Reuters