Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

[IronAir]

Samsung ev-do phone for U.S. - 2005'Q1
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Samsung to Sell U.S. High-Speed Phone in Early 2005

~ http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=582&e=2&u=/nm/20041111/wr_nm/telecoms_sa... / NEW YORK (Reuters) - / 2004'Nov'1'est17:30

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. plans to introduce a mobile telephone with high-speed Internet links in the United States in the first quarter of next year, an executive said on Thursday.

Peter Skarzynski, a Samsung vice president for mobile phones, said the phone would be based on EV-DO, a high-speed technology that Verizon Wireless and Sprint Corp. are building into their networks.

Verizon Wireless, the No. 2 U.S. mobile provider, has said it would begin to market high-speed services to consumers when its first EV-DO phones go on sale next year but it has not yet revealed a launch date or named its device suppliers.

Verizon now uses EV-DO technology in a number of U.S. markets to deliver the Internet to business customers via laptop computers at speeds similar to home broadband links.

Samsung's Skarzynski was speaking at a event where Samsung displayed several phones it plans to deliver to U.S. consumers in the coming months. He declined to give specific details about Samsung's first high-speed U.S. phone and did not say which service provider would sell the product.

Samsung showed two EV-DO phones with computer features that it expects to launch in the United States around the middle of 2005.

Its i730 EV-DO phone has a large screen and a keyboard that users can slide out from inside the phone when they want to type messages or e-mails. The i640 EV-DO phone has a keyboard that can be attached to the phone when the user wants to type.

Samsung also unveiled its p735 phone, which has a high resolution camera and music player and will go on sale by year end at the fourth-biggest U.S. provider T-Mobile USA -- owned by Germany's Deutsche Telekom.

It expects to sell its RL-A760 phone to Sprint also by year end. This phone has walkie-talkie style capability and voice recognition technology that will let users dial phone numbers by saying the name of the person they want to call.

Samsung plans to sell another phone in the first quarter aimed at people who use their phones to play video games. The n330 has a screen that can be made bigger for game playing and can be set to vibrate at key points during a game.

It did not reveal prices.

Samsung is the world's third largest mobile phone maker but is only about 500,000 phone sales away from taking the No. 2 position from Motorola Inc., according to analysts.

It is expected to provide about 20 percent of the roughly 100 million mobile handsets to be sold in the United States this year.