Samsung Electronics, the world's biggest manufacturer of memory chips, has posted a jump of almost 400% in net profits for July, August and September.

The South Korean firm is also the world's third biggest mobile phone make, taking 10% of the world market by focusing on snappy design with its clam-shaped phones and all-colour screens.

Samsung also unveiled a shake-up for the memory chip market, saying it plans to raise the price of its fastest chips.

Net profits climbed to 1.73 trillion won ($1.4bn: £900m) in the third quarter of 2002 from 420 billion won a year earlier.

Top end of market

The results came a day after rival mobile phone firm Nokia beat analysts' forecasts with a 17% jump in pre-tax profits for the same period.

Samsung owes its strong performance to its focus on the top end of the market in the chip business - enabling it to beat a sector slump - and strong design in its phone manufacturing operations, analysts said.

"Despite slumping chip prices and flat panel displays, Samsung posted the most outstanding results among global IT companies," said Hyundai Securities analyst Simon Woo.

Samsung said it plans to raise the price of its most up-to-date memory chips, known as double data rate DRAM. (DDR DRAM).

It has already increased the proportion of DDR DRAM chips in its factory output to 58% and cut production of cheaper DRAM chips to below 50% during the third quarter.

Diverse portfolio

The group's net profits were four times stronger than its performance in the same period of last year, though they failed to match it record net profits of 1.9 trillion won in the April, May and June 2002 period.

Group sales were 9.92 trillion won, up from 7.2 trillion won a year ago, but down slightly from 9.94 trillion won in the second quarter.

Samsung's range of household goods and consumer electronics includes televisions, refrigerators and washing machines.

In Seoul, Samsung's shares rose more than 6%.