Net income came to 5.75 trillion won ($4.95 billion) in the April-June period, 7.97 percent down from 6.25 trillion won a year earlier.
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The company’s recent slump has stood in stark contrast to the performance of Apple, which has seen profits gain sharply on strong sales of its latest iPhone series.
“The mobile business plans to firmly maintain its sale of premium smartphones by flexibly adjusting the price of the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, and launching a new model with a larger screen”, the firm said. It’s yet another quarter of shrinking profits which fell 8 per cent year-on-year, forcing the company to accede that sales of Galaxy S6 phones had been “quite marginal”.
The firm also reported a 4 percent fall in second-quarter profit and ruled out a “special dividend” similar to a big year-end payout for 2014.
Samsung Electronic’s semiconductor unit, which also makes chips for other smartphone makers like Apple, fared better. Increasing prices won’t help in this situation, so the only way for them to go is down – and that means that users can look forward to price cuts on the company’s Android flagships in the near future. Memory sales were lower than their seasonal average, but Samsung credits high demand for 14-nm mobile chips and high-end LSI products such as its high-megapixel CMOS image sensors for picking up the slack.
Samsung reported disappointing Q2 results attributed to weaker than expected Galaxy 6 smartphone sales.
The decline in mobile profit was smaller than the previous quarter’s almost 60 percent plunge, but it extended the mobile division’s losing streak.
Industry analysts expected the downward trend to continue even with the positive reception being enjoyed by the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge smartphones.
Overall, the company’s net profit was down 8 percent year on year, and revenue dropped 7.3 percent.
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Analysts have suggested that Samsung’s results are being hurt by the fact that its phones are coming under attack from the new iPhones at the top of the price range, and from cheaper Asian handsets at the bottom.
