Seoul, Jul 28 (IANS): Riding on the strong sales of its Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge smartphones, Samsung Electronics on Thursday declared 8.14 trillion won ($7billion) year on-year operating profit - 18 per cent - in the second quarter results.

Touted as a bad news for Apple that saw a 15 per cent decline in iPhone sales in its second quarter results announced this week, Samsung saw substantial earnings improvement led by sales of its flagship products such as Galaxy S7 and S7 edge.

A streamlined mid-to low-end smartphone lineup also contributed to improved profitability for the company.

According to Samsung, it shipped about 90 million handsets in the April-June period with smartphones making up more than 80 per cent of the total, the Korea Herald reported.

Samsung's second-quarter smartphone shipments are estimated at about 72 million units, almost doubling Apple's iPhone shipments of 40.4 million units during the same period.

Shipments of tablet PCs stood at about six million units.

"Looking into the third quarter, the release of a new large-screen flagship smartphone will help to maintain solid sales of high-end smartphones led by the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge," the company in a statement.

Samsung will also focus on expanding smartphone sales including this year's new Galaxy A and J series and the debut of the Galaxy C series exclusively for the China market.