Galaxy S6 fails to reverse profit decline at Samsung

(Updates with closing share price in fifth paragraph.).

The company said Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge sales were lower than expected. Samsung also noted the supply issues that plagued the Galaxy S6 edge have been addressed, which is a good indication that the another curved smartphone is en route. Samsung, the biggest seller of phones using Google Inc.’s Android software, brought forward the release of its next high-end device and is adding cheaper models. The division logged profits of two.nine billion dollars – a five-year high – and all-time record sales of nine.seven billion dollars.

At a separate board meeting, Samsung also doubled interim dividend to 1,000 won per share.

It generated 2.8 trillion won operating income from the mobile business, highest in the last four quarters, but a big decline from 4.4 trillion won income a year earlier.

Samsung said it shipped 89 million handsets in the second quarter.

To counter sluggish smartphone sales and try to fire up the market, Samsung said it “plans to firmly maintain its sale of premium smartphones by flexibly adjusting the price of the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge”, while launching another model with a larger screen. Meanwhile, operating margin edged up slightly from the preceding first quarter to 10.6 percent.

The report did not say, however, when the prices would be slashed or by how much.

South Korean conglomerate Samsung Electronics Co.

Executive Director Neil Mawston of Strategy Analytics, a research firm, told Bloomberg that China is becoming a problem for Samsung and it needs to address it soon.

Samsung recently sent out an invite for an August. 13 event in New York. Especially with the looming threat of Apple’s new phones on the horizon for the second half of the year.

Operating profit was 6.9 trillion won (5.9 billion U.S. dollars) in the three months through June, the company said in a statement.

Samsung’s overall profit picture would have been even worse, but for another strong showing from the company’s components business, which includes memory chips, application processors and display panels.