Samsung to roll out low-end smartphones at home

Samsung Electronics, the world's No. 1 maker of smartphones, will roll out two low-end models in the domestic market this month amid fiercer competition with rivals, especially Chinese manufacturers, in the low-end sector.

The 5-inch Galaxy A5 will be launched on Thursday at home, the South Korean tech behemoth said. The 5.5-inch Galaxy A7 is set to come up in the local market later this month.

The Samsung Electronics' first metal-framed models will be the thinnest ever among those released by the company, with the Galaxy A5 being 6.7 mm thick and the Galaxy A7 being 6.3 mm.

The new smartphones will be hundreds of U.S. dollars cheaper than Samsung's the Galaxy S series. The Galaxy A5 will cost about 484,000 won (445 U.S. dollars), with the Galaxy A7 to be priced at 583,000 won.

Samsung's expansion in the low-end lineup came as the company's earnings from smartphone sales continued to fall on fiercer competition with Chinese rivals.

Samsung's global market share in smartphones declined 7.7 percentage points from a year earlier to 24.4 percent in the third quarter of 2014. The combined share of three major Chinese companies, including Xiaomi, Huawei and Lenovo, increased 4.1 percentage points to 15.5 percent in the same period.

The company unveiled the Samsung Z1, its first Tizen-powered handset, in India last week, with the price tag only amounting to 5,700 Indian rupees (91 U.S. dollars). Tizen is a smartphone operating system promoted by the company.

The Galaxy A5 comes with a HD Super AMOLED, or active mode organic light-emitting diode, display and a quad-core processor. The Galaxy A7 features a Full HD AMOLED display with an octa-core processor.

The two models are equipped with a 5-megapixel front camera and a 13-megapixel rear camera, allowing users to take better selfies as the devices can take pictures by folding and unfolding hands.