Samsung Electronics, the company that earlier this year overtook Nokia as the world's largest manufacturer of mobile phones, expects sales of its smartphones to surge in the second quarter to arrive at an operating profit of around US$5.7 billion.

With its flagship product, the Galaxy S III smartphone, growth is expected to continue into the third quarter, despite its ongoing disputes with Apple and the preliminary injunction banning sales in the US of the Galaxy Nexus and slowing demand in Europe, the company's second-biggest market.

Samsung has been ordered to stop selling its Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet PC in the US following a ruling that it had infringed four iPhone patents, including the use of Siri, Apple's language user interface, the use of sliding to unlock mobile devices, the text input interface that anticipates and recommends words a user is typing, and the manipulation of structures within computer data. Analysts fear that the dispute may impact sales of Samsung's Galaxy S III.

In response, Google have now planned a software update to its Android operating system to circumvent the ban and has installed a software patch changing its quick-search and voice-search facilities and limiting them to web-based results only.

But Samsung is still said to be worried about the legal spill-over from the ruling, even though Apple lost their battle against HTC in the UK when High Court judge Christopher Floyd ruled that Taiwanese competitor HTC from did not infringe the four patents, including the slide-to-unlock feature.

However, despite Samsung's uplifting earnings forecast, its shares slipped over concerns that the Eurozone's debt problems, which has led to an economic slowdown in the region. And analysts are predicting that sales will also slow in the fourth quarter due to the launch of Apple's iPhone 5.

Samsung reached the top of global smartphone rankings with almost a fifth of the market last year, which is no doubt the reason for the fully-fledged legal onslaught by Apple. The launch of its Galaxy S III is in direct competition with Apple's iPhone 5. Their positive sales figures have also increased pressure on HTC and Nokia, with the Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer reporting a 70% fall in net profit in the first quarter.

Park Jong-Min, fund manager with ING Investment Management, commented: "We expect a correction in Samsung's earnings, as the launch of the new iPhone will lead to a decline in Samsung's profit in the high-end smartphone business."

Another analyst, CW Chung of Nomura said: "For the third quarter, we forecast revenue and operating profit will stand at record highs of 54 trillion won and 8.5 trillion won respectively, thanks to the effect of Galaxy S III on the handset and component divisions." He forecasts the company will ship over 18 million Galaxy S III smartphones in the third quarter.