Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s No. 1 maker of smartphones, is estimated to have handed out around 3.2 trillion won ($3.03 billion) in bonuses in 2013, market watchers said Monday.

The South Korean tech giant’s regulatory data showed it had given out 2.4 trillion won worth of incentives through September in 2013, with its average quarterly amount reaching 821.6 billion won.

The yearly estimate will mark a 21 percent increase from the record 2.7 trillion won posted for fiscal 2012, the data showed.

Market watchers said the increase mainly came as Samsung provided special bonuses to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the so-called New Management Initiative, the key business strategy of the group.

Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-hee announced the vision to spur the group into a world-class business entity in 1993. One of the most famous lines that came from the speech was “Change everything but your wife and children.”

Analysts, meanwhile, have been downgrading the company’s profit outlook for the fourth quarter of 2013, citing its one-off expenditures such as the massive bonus. Samsung is slated to announce its earnings guidance on Tuesday.

The tech giant usually provides two productivity incentives to its employees every year: a cash bonus and a one profit-sharing bonus of up to 50 percent of annual paychecks. (Yonhap News)