South Korea's two mobile carriers -- SK Telecom Co. and KT Corp. -- said Friday they have begun taking preorders for Apple Inc.'s latest iPhone models that are expected to hit the local market later this month.

South Korean customers can preorder the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c on the operators' websites. Preorders for the newest iPhone line-up can also be made at the mobile carriers' local retail stores.

The 16-gigabyte iPhone 5s is priced at 814,000 won ($767), with the comparable figure for the iPhone 5C set at 704,000 won, the mobile operator said.

Apple launched the new handsets last month in the United States, China and other markets, and reported that it sold some nine million units in the first three days. The new devices will be also launched this month in some other countries, the iPhone maker said earlier.

Apple's newest smartphones came as it has been struggling with a decline in its presence in the global smartphone market.

Samsung Electronics Co., the world's largest smartphone maker and Apple's archrival, posted a record shipment in the second quarter of the year, earlier data showed.

According to the data compiled by research firm Strategy Analytics, Samsung Electronics shipped a record 76 million smartphones in the second quarter, compared with 69.4 million in the previous quarter.

The South Korean smartphone maker also continued to dominate the global smartphone market in terms of market share, with its stake in the April-June period standing at 33.1 percent, remaining flat from the previous quarter, according to the researcher.

On the other hand, Apple saw its smartphone shipments sink to 31.2 million in the second quarter from 37.4 million from three months earlier, with its market share falling to 13.6 percent from 17.9 percent over the cited period, it said. (Yonhap News)