SAMSUNG UNVEILS GALAXY S6 TO ANSWER iPHONE 6

Samsung Electronics CEO JK Shin presents the Samsung Galaxy S6.

BARCELONA — Samsung Electronics Co. introduced a flagship smartphone with a curved screen and mobile-payment system, seeking to spark sales after a painful year that saw its leadership eroded by Apple Inc. and Chinese upstarts like Xiaomi Corp.

The new Galaxy S6 and its double curved-screen variant the Galaxy S6 Edge, released Sunday on the sidelines of an annual trade show here, outlines Samsung’s005930, +4.86% latest strategy for finding its footing: take on Apple’s AAPL, -1.50% iPhone head on, while bringing even more of the manufacturing process under its control.

The new phone will be available globally starting April 10. In the U.S., Samsung said it will be offered by all the major carriers, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint.

The stakes are high for Samsung, which saw its previous flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S5, fall flat with consumers.

To reverse the damage, Samsung is releasing a new device that directly rebuts many of the criticisms that dogged its predecessor. In contrast to the mostly plastic Galaxy S5, the S6 will come encased in a slim frame made of reinforced glass and aircraft-grade aluminum.

Samsung also matched Apple’s mobile payment service with one of its own, dubbed Samsung Pay, and designed it to work with the magnetic-stripe machines that are found at nine out of ten cash registers in the U.S.

To address complaints that Samsung phones were bogged down with little-used software, the company removed many of its apps and streamlined the user interface.

Perhaps most importantly for Samsung’s attempts to reverse its sliding profits is what’s inside the device: application processors developed entirely in house rather than chips from Qualcomm Inc. QCOM, +0.69% , giving Samsung more control over almost all the components in its handset.

The Wall Street Journal