Electronics giant Samsung has reported better than expected third-quarter results, boosted by sales of semiconductors and mobile phones. 

A global DRam supply slowdown, which has pushed up prices, was a key factor in the company's strong performance in a tough market, analysts said today.

Samsung's quarterly net income rose to $2.31bn, an increase of 16 per cent compared to the same quarter last year. Sales reached $15.93bn for the quarter.

"Our strategy of producing high performance, differentiated products into multiple end markets allowed us to power ahead and deliver solid third-quarter results in a challenging IT environment," said senior Samsung vice president Woosik Chu.

Operating profit was boosted by better than expected performance at Samsung's semiconductor division, which made some $80m more than anticipated during the quarter.

"The strong semiconductor results appear to be powered by robust performance of DRam," said Jay Kim, an analyst at Hyundai Securities.

Samsung, one of the world's largest memory chip makers, shifted memory production facilities from older chips to higher-profit products like DDR2 memory.

This helped push DRam profit margins up by 3.7 per cent compared to the previous quarter, according to data supplied by Samsung. The company plans to invest an extra $1bn to boost memory chip production capacity.