REPORTS coming out from Samsung Electronics show that the company is on course to post a better-than-expected 10 per cent increase in its first-quarter profits, riding on robust sales of its new flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S7 4G+ and the S7 Edge 4G+.

The South Korean company said its January-March quarter profits are expected to be around 6.6 trillion won (S$7.77 billion), up from six trillion won a year ago. This beats analyst estimates which, according to Bloomberg News, was 5.53 trillion won. This kind of wide discrepancy between analysts' consensus and actual results are quite rare, especially for a company as closely followed as Samsung.

One reason for analysts being off-target could be that they did not anticipate just how much of a hit this year's flagship phones would be. According to reports coming out of Korea, Samsung expects to sell around 10 million units in the one month since the phones' debut in March. This is around three times the number of S6 phones sold last year in the one month after release.