Samsung today posted its second-quarter earnings reports, where it missed the analysts expectations by a significant margin. While the company managed to make a whopping profit of 7.2 trillion won, it was still lower than the 8.1 trillion won that industry analysts had expected. 

The company managed sales totaling 52 trillion won in the last quarter, which is again lower than what the analysts had expected. Keep in mind that the profit and sales figure here are for the whole of Samsung Electronics and not just for its phone division, even though the latter brings about the majority of the profit.

“The second quarter is a seasonally weak period for smartphone demand in China,” Samsung said in an e-mailed statement. “The company cautiously expects a more positive outlook in the third quarter with the coming release of its new smartphone lineup. Samsung does not expect any major marketing expenditure to occur in the upcoming quarter.”

The poor performance of the company can be attributed to the fact that it has been struggling to differentiate its lower-end products from that of Chinese OEMs. Samsung expects to rebound in the third quarter as it prepares to launch its flagship phablet — the Galaxy Note 4 at IFA in September. However, with Apple working on releasing an iPhone with a bigger screen, the company is going to face some stiff competition towards the end of Q3 and beginning of Q4.