Samsung is flooding its home market in a bid to head off Apple

Samsung is set to release a number of new smartphone models into its local market in a bid to head off Apple’s forthcoming South Korean release of its iPhone 5S and 5C smartphones.

Korea IT News reports Samsung’s latest device to hit the market is called the Galaxy S4 Zoom, which features 10X optical zoom and a 16-megapixel camera.

It also has plans to launch a new low-end smartphone featuring a 4.7-inch display, codenamed Delos, before the end of the month.

The new devices come on top of the curved-screen Galaxy Round smartphone, released by the company on October 10, the Galaxy Note 3 in September, along with a slew of smartphones in August including the Galaxy Mega, Galaxy Golden and Galaxy S4 Mini.

According to figures recently released by analytics firm Flurry, Samsung controls around 60% of the South Korean smartphone market.

In comparison, Apple holds around 14%, with local rivals LG and Pantech holding 15% and 10% respectively.

Making matters more difficult for Apple, the South Korean market is notable for unusually strong sales of large smartphones (or phablets) between 5-inches and 6.9-inches in size – a category the Californian company doesn’t compete in.

While Phablets account for around 7% of all smart device sales, they account for 41% of the market in South Korea.