SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics said its third-quarter profit jumped from a year earlier, but the pace of recovery weakened from the prior quarter as it struggles to cash in on the AI boom that has benefited chip rivals like TSMC and SK Hynix.

The world's biggest maker of memory chips, smartphones and TVs posted on Thursday an operating profit of 9.2 trillion won in the July to September period, compared with 2.4 trillion won a year earlier and 10.4 trillion won the previous quarter.

The third-quarter result was slightly above Samsung's preliminary estimate of 9.1 trillion won flagged earlier this month, which was below market expectations at the time.

The South Korean company this month made a rare apology for its disappointing earnings, citing "delays" in sales of its advanced chips to an unidentified major customer and rising supply of traditional chips from Chinese rivals.

Artificial intelligence is the only bright spot in the sluggish chip market, but Samsung has been struggling to supply high-end semiconductors used in Nvidia's AI chipsets, making the South Korean company more vulnerable to lacklustre demand for traditional chips used in PCs and smartphones.

In contrast, SK Hynix and TSMC posted strong third-quarter profits, thanks to AI chip sales to industry leader Nvidia.