Samsung's smartphone Galaxy S to hit U.S. in July

By Lee Youkyung
SEOUL, June 30 (Yonhap) -- Samsung Electronics Co. said Wednesday it will launch
the Galaxy S smartphone, the company's biggest bet to take on Apple Inc.'s
iPhone, in the U.S. via four major mobile carriers starting in July.
Samsung hopes its Android-powered Galaxy S model will help it gain a stronger
footing in the lucrative smartphone segment. Samsung, the world's No. 2 mobile
phone maker after Nokia Corp., has so far failed to deliver a megahit smartphone
model.
"A simultaneous supply of a single model to all four major mobile carriers in the
U.S. is unheard of, which proves the superiority of the Galaxy S," JK Shin,
president of Samsung's mobile communications division, was quoted as saying in a
statement.
The move contrasts with Apple's choice to offer its iPhone 3GS exclusively to
AT&T, the second-largest mobile carrier in the U.S.
Wireless carriers will fine-tune Samsung's new model with slight variations and
brand them with different names, Samsung said.
Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. wireless service company, will offer Fascinate
Galaxy S, while AT&T will name the model Samsung Captivate.
The country's third-largest mobile carrier, Spring Nextel Corp., will call the
phone Epic 4G and offer a computer-like qwerty keyboard and support for the
high-speed wireless broadband known as mobile WiMAX.
No. 4 mobile service provider T-Mobile USA plans to call the model Vibrant.
Meanwhile, the battle is heating up between Galaxy S and the iPhone on Samsung's
home turf of South Korea, where the iPhone become the first megahit phone made by
a non-Korean company when it debuted locally at the end of 2009.
Sales of the Galaxy S, released in South Korea last week, topped 100,000 units
within six days of its launch, according to SK Telecom Co., the top mobile
carrier in the country. Apple has sold more than 800,000 units of its iPhone 3GS
model in South Korea as of Saturday.
Analysts said supplying one model to multiple carriers at the same time will help
boost sales. They were also upbeat about sales prospects of the Galaxy S both at
home and abroad.
"We think the Galaxy S will lead the domestic smartphone market until the iPhone
4 is introduced," Yang Jong-in, an analyst at Korea Investment & Securities,
wrote in a report Monday. The iPhone 4 will be launched in South Korea sometime
in July, but the exact date has not been set yet, said Apple's local operator KT
Corp.
Around 5 million units of the Galaxy S are predicted to be sold in the
July-December period, said Nicolas Guadois, an analyst at UBS, in a report dated
June 23.
ylee@yna.co.kr
(END)

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