• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, July 6, 2018

Due to slowing smartphone sales, Samsung now estimates that second-quarter earnings grew at the slowest pace in over a year.

From April through June of this year, the South Korean tech giant saw operating profit grow 5.2% to $13.2 billion, according to a Friday announcement.

Leading up to today’s guidance, Samsung had been flying high. Following years of litigation, a jury recently decided that Samsung owes Apple far less than previously determined.

While Apple had already been awarded over $1 billion for Samsung infringing on its intellectual property, a jury just slashed that number to roughly $500 million.

Samsung also reported strong first-quarter earnings, in early April. But slowing smartphone revenue is weighing down Samsung’s bottom line.

After about seven years of declining growth, global smartphone shipments completely stagnated in 2017, according to a recent report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Mary Meeker. Meeker largely attributed the stalled growth to maturing mobile markets.

Measuring revenue, Samsung continues to play second fiddle to Apple. According to recent estimates, Apple generated three times more smartphone revenue than Samsung, in the fourth quarter of 2017.

During the period, Samsung grew its global smartphone wholesale revenues by 16% year-over-year to $19 billion, per Strategy Analytics.

By contrast, Apple took in $61 billion of the $120 billion that consumers spent on smartphones during the period, per the research and consulting firm.