Samsung Announces Marketing Campaign for Streaming Cell Phone

Samsung Electronics (www.samsungusa.com) has announced that it is now marketing the world's first CDMA2000 1x mobile handset with the capability to receive motion pictures in color. Development of Samsung's VOD Phone was completed last December, and the phone supports video on demand (VOD), audio on demand (AOD) and other advanced functions slated for IMT-2000.

SK Telecom of Korea announced the commercial operation of its 3G network using Qualcomm's CDMA2000 1X technology in October of 2000. The network was developed by 3Com Corporation and Samsung Electronics. The network was initially rolled out in the Seoul and Inchon regions and was slated to expand to other cities during this year.

Korea will have more than one 3G standard operating within its borders, though. The Korean government in December 2000, awarded two licenses for mobile phones using WCDMA technology, a competing 3G standard, to a group led by state-run Korea Telecom and SK Telecom, Korea's largest mobile carrier. It is unclear at this time whether Samsung intends to release its VOD phone for the WCDMA protocol, also.

Samsung states that its color VOD Phone comes with a 2.04" TFT-LCD that can reproduce clear motion picture images in 200,000 different color shades. The handset will enable mobile access to various content services with color moving pictures such as music, videos, Internet broadcasts, animation, news reports and so on.

The handset is based on CDMA2000 1x, the first next-generation wireless technology commercialized in Korea, and comes with a MPEG-4 motion picture decoder and stereo player built in. Samsung has begun the marketing campaign of this phone at a time when NTT DoCoMo and BT have announced rather high-profile delays to their 3G rollouts due to handset troubles. As DoCoMo and BT are building out their networks on a competing 3G network standard, WCDMA, the Samsung phone is currently incompatible, though.

The ultra-energy-efficient circuit design and optimized software combine to greatly extend battery life to provide ample time for viewing motion pictures in color. Samsung licensed and used a chip design by Emblaze Wireless to stream-enable the phone.