News
Issue #2002 - 36 (September 2002)
(Updated October 2, 2002)

INFRASTRUCTURE, PRODUCTS & SERVICES

Samsung Enters US Wireless Market with i500

Source: Reuters - written by Eric Auchard

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. unveiled on Tuesday ambitious new products in a bid to boost its momentum in the U.S. wireless market with a range of new combination camera- or computer-phone devices. 

Samsung, which has rocketed in recent years to become the world's third largest supplier of mobile phones, launched a big new theater-quality television screens, high-capacity digital camera memory chips and a no-excuses mobile phone with handheld computer features, as it spells out its product strategy for the upcoming year. 

Samsung Electronics has worked in recent years to capitalize on its semiconductor manufacturing prowess in memory chips and display screens to create advanced mobile phones and computers that are also highly cost-competitive. 

A top executive of the Korean chip-making conglomerate turned brand-name consumer electronics maker said Samsung is unveiling the products on Tuesday at a news conference to showcase products for U.S. consumers, Samsung's biggest target market. 

"We are emerging as industry leader in digital convergence products," Eric Kim, Samsung's global marketing chief and executive vice president, said of the way its electronics blend consumer electronic, computer and mobile phone features. 

Building on its success in the Korean market, which in the past two years has emerged as the world's most advanced mobile phone market, Samsung will introduce to the U.S. market its i500 SmartPhone, a flip-open phone that is also a full-featured Palm computer. The i500 is due out in the fourth quarter, Kim said. 

This device will be one of the first phones to hit the U.S. market that distills the features of a popular Palm handheld computer into a small mobile phone. Rival Palm-phones typically share more in common with bulkier handheld computers. 

This includes Samsung's existing i300 Palm computer phone, which it plans to upgrade to add location-finding features. The new i330 retains the larger handheld shape of its predecessor but adds graspable rubber edges to make it easier to grasp. 

Samsung also plans to introduce a new camera phone aimed to work on next-generation so-called GPRS networks. 

Brian Prohm, a wireless industry analyst with Gartner Group, said that Samsung's new products are needed to make further in-roads among U.S. mobile operators who it must partner with in order to sell such devices. 

Currently only Sprint PCS, the nation's No. 4 mobile operator, sells large volumes of Samsung products. While the Korean equipment maker has established a foothold at No. 2 ranked Cingular and No. 6-ranked provider VoiceStream, Samsung must bolster its market share in these other carriers to gain a further share of the U.S. wireless market, Prohm said. 

Kim said Samsung has identified the market for thin, high-resolution flat-panel televisions as "probably the fastest growing market that we see." 

"Our view is that the move to flat panels will accelerate," he said, referring to growing worldwide demand for sleek monitors to replace bulky analog TVs. 

At an event being held at the Gugghenheim Museum in New York, Samsung plans to showcase what Kim said was the world's thinnest flat panel TV based on plasma-display technology. 

The 42-inch theater-quality resolution screen will, in the course of the next year, reach prices of $100 per inch of screen, an important price barrier that no one else in the industry has yet reached. The 42-inch model will be priced around $4,200, followed by 53-inch and 63-inch models. 

Samsung will also unveil the world's biggest flat-panel TV based on rival liquid crystal display technology. LCD flat panels offer higher resolution than plasma screens and use less power but command far higher costs -- around $12,000 for the 40-inch screen TV it will introduce on Tuesday. 

"We're one of only two companies in the world that has both the technology and the large-scale manufacturing to produce both sorts of flat-panel televisions." 

Its rival here is Dutch-Korean joint venture Philips/LG. 

The company also plans to push ahead with the world's densest flash memory chips, coming out this year with a two-gigabit flash chip that can be used to store hundreds or even thousands of digital photographs, for example. 

Top Samsung executives will kick-off the first of a four-stop international product road-show in New York that eventually will move on to Beijing, Singapore and Paris. 

Kim said in an interview ahead of the meeting that the overall message will be that "We are growing very nicely in all parts of the world. Each of our business units is doing well." 

For more information: http://www.reuters.com

MobileInfo Comments and Advisory:  Samsung is flexing its muscles in the wireless arena. It will keep competition in the handset market strong and prices under control. 

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