Tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd said yesterday its fourth-quarter operating profit likely rose 15 per cent from a year earlier, missing expectations and fuelling concerns the tech industry may be in for a tough year of slack gadget sales.

Slowing economic growth in China and weaker emerging market currencies are undercutting sales of consumer electronics and gadget components, spelling trouble not only for smartphone market leaders Samsung and Apple Inc. but for their suppliers and the broader industry.

Samsung said in a regulatory filing its October-December operating profit would likely be 6.1 trillion won (£3 billion), compared with a 6.60 trillion won Thomson Reuters SmartEstimate derived from a survey of 30 analysts. Revenue likely rose 0.5 per cent to 53 trillion won, the firm said, without elaborating.

“Semiconductor earnings were weak and the smartphone industry entered a phase of low growth,” KTB Investment analyst Jin Sung-hye said.

Even so, Samsung shares were up 1.8 per cent as of 0124 GMT, outperforming a 0.1 per cent rise for the broader market. “I think Samsung did well considering the weaker tech demand,” Jin said.

Shares of the world’s No.1 maker of memory chips and smartphones touched a three-month low on Thursday as investors braced for downside risks, with some brokerages having tipped profit to have fallen as low as six trillion won.

The guidance was not a major surprise as Samsung chief executive Kwon Oh-hyun had warned on Monday that the maker of Galaxy smartphones faced a challenging time ahead due to weak global economic growth.

The tech sector was further rattled on Wednesday when Apple shares fell below $100 for the first time in nearly five months on reports of slowing iPhone 6s and 6s Plus shipments for the January-March quarter.

Shares in major component makers were also battered. Investors bailed out of Apple suppliers Cirrus Logic Inc. and Qorvo Inc. on Thursday after they cut their revenue estimates for the third quarter.