Samsung Electronics Co. saw its global presence in the semiconductor sector advance on-year in 2015, its business report showed Friday, while the shares in the handset segment continued to lose ground.

According to the latest data compiled by the South Korean giant, Samsung took up 45.3 percent of the global dynamic random access memory market in 2015, up 5.7 percentage points from 39.6 percent posted a year earlier.

"While the falling demand in mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablet PCs, emerged as a major drag on the chip segment, we expect the growth to continue in the server and other high-capacity memory segments," Samsung said. 

"We also expect new demand to rise from the Internet-of-Things and automotive industries," it added.

Samsung's handset business, which used to stand as the firm's main revenue source, took up 21.1 percent of the market, down 1.3 percentage points on-year. It also marked a sharp decline from 26.8 percent posted in 2013.

Industry watchers, however, expect the sales of smartphones to improve throughout 2016 on the back of the better-than-expected sales of the Galaxy S7 series just released last month.

Samsung's TV business also lost ground amid the industrywide slump around the globe, with its share reaching 21 percent last year, down from 22.6 percent posted in 2014.

The tech giant's share for display panels managed to inch up 0.2 percentage point over the cited period to 21.1 percent.

Samsung's global market share for the top four products -- TVs, displays, chips and handsets -- all hovered above the 20 percent mark for the third consecutive year.

In 2015, Samsung's net profit shed 18.53 percent to 19 trillion won ($16.5 billion). Its operating profit came to 26.4 trillion won, up 5.55 percent from the previous year, but sales dropped 2.69 percent to 200.6 trillion won. (Yonhap)