Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics released its finalized third quarter earnings report on Wednesday.br The company says.... it posted record quarterly profits... thanks to a strong performance by its semiconductor unit.br Kim Ji-yeon reports.br br The South Korean smartphone and chip maker Samsung Electronics says it posted record operating profits of more than 15-point-four billion U.S. dollars during the July-to-September period.br That's a near-21-percent jump from the same period last year... and some 61-million dollars more than its provisional estimate released earlier this month.br The report also shows combined sales of 57-and-a-half billion dollars, up five-and-a-half percent on-year.br The lion's share of Samsung Electronics' earnings came from its chip unit... which recorded an all-time-high of nearly 12-billion dollars in operating profits.br The company's IT & Mobile Communications division posted moderate operating profits of around 2-billion dollars... while sales were at around 22-billion dollars.br Its consumer electronics division recorded operating profits of 491-million dollars.br Samsung Electronics projected record-high operating profits of around 57-billion dollars and combined sales of around 219-billion dollars for this year... although it also says fourth quarter earnings will be lukewarm br compared to Q3... as the memory chip market enters a period of seasonal weakness and prices of DRAMs and nand-flash memory chips decline .br The report also cites marketing costs in its smartphone business which continue to increase.br Kim Ji-yeon, Arirang News.