Samsung Electronics said today that it expects a first-quarter operating profit of between 8.5 trillion won and 8.9 trillion won ($7.6 billion to $8 billion), a sharp increase of at least 49 percent from a year earlier. Market watchers said the South Korean electronics giants appears to be poised to post better-than-expected results despite seasonally slow first-quarter demand for IT products and costs resulting from a patent dispute with its biggest rival, Apple.