Seoul, Apr 7 (IANS): Samsung Electronics said on Thursday it is likely to report its best first-quarter earnings in four years on the back of solid chip and mobile demand.

In its earnings guidance, the South Korean tech giant estimated its operating profit at 14.1 trillion won ($11.5 billion) for the first three months of the year, up 50.3 per cent from a year ago.

Its January-March operating income estimate beat the market consensus of 13.2 trillion won in the data compiled by Yonhap Infomax, the financial arm of Yonhap News Agency.

If the preliminary result stands, it would mark the company's record first-quarter sales and the third consecutive quarter that the tech giant logs 70 trillion won in quarterly sales.

The world's largest memory chip and smartphone maker did not break down the performances of its respective business divisions. It will announce the detailed earnings later this month.

In the January-March period, prices of memory chips, core products that support a great portion of Samsung's top and bottom lines, held up better than expected.

Analysts estimated Samsung's semiconductor business to earn 25 trillion won in sales and 8 trillion won in operating profit, up from 19.1 trillion won and 3.37 trillion won from a year ago.

Robust businesses of smartphones and high-end home appliances are also believed to help boost the tech giant's profits.

Samsung launched its latest flagship smartphone series, the Galaxy S22, in late February.

Sales of the series are expected to soon surpass 1 million in South Korea, according to the company, which is two weeks faster than the Galaxy S21 series did and 47 days faster than the mega-hit Galaxy S10 did in 2019.A

Pre-orders were more than double those for the Galaxy S21 series worldwide.

The upbeat forecast came amid a series of external challenges, ranging from volatile raw material costs spurred by Russia's invasion of Ukraine to the global supply chain disruptions.

Samsung said there was no immediate impact from the war in Ukraine on its chip production thanks to "diversified sources for materials" and ample inventory of key materials like neon.