The business environment hasn't really been favorable for Samsung in recent years. It's facing intense competition in the memory segment and lags behind rivals in the lucrative HBM3E segment. It hasn't been able to win any significant orders on the foundry's advanced processes and smartphone growth has plateaued. No surprises, then, that analysts are now projecting a significant operating profit decline for Samsung Electronics in the second quarter of this year. The consensus estimate is that Samsung will project a 39% operating profit decline for this quarter.Samsung continues to face challenging market conditionsAn LSEG SmartEStimate analysis indicates that Samsung Electronics will project 6.3 trillion won or $4.62 billion in operating profit tomorrow for the April – June 2025 quarter. This would be a 39% decline and the company's lowest operating profit in six quarters.Analysts flag the HBM weakness as a sustained drag on the company's profitability. Samsung has not yet won any HBM3E orders from NVIDIA which would have been a lucrative deal. It also remains unable to sell advanced memory chips in China as sales are restricted by the US.There's likely not going to be any significant increase in Samsung's HBM shipments to NVIDIA this year. The company now intends to focus more on HBM4 in the hopes that it can turn things around the following year. Mass production of the next-generation high-bandwidth memory chips may begin later this year.Smartphone sales have thankfully remained solid and sustained demand for stock ahead of US tariff implementation will likely boost the division's contributions this past quarter.The post Samsung’s profits may be down by a staggering 39% this quarter appeared first on SamMobile.