re: Samsung & Symbian maybe
>> Samsung Adds Symbian Software To Its Range
Mar 14, 2001
Lucas van Grinsven
HANOVER, Germany
Reuters
Samsung Electronics, the world's fastest growing cellphone maker, said on Thursday it would add Symbian to its software partners and plans to expand into low-cost cellphones.
The South-Korean TVs to phones manufacturer is the last of the world's top five handset makers to adopt the software of Symbian, a British company that has been set up as counterweight to Microsoft and is financially supported by three of the top five phone producers.
Microsoft is trying to expand from the stagnant personal computer market, where its software can be found on 90 percent of all PCs, into the rapidly growing mobile phone market. Cellphones increasingly offer services which can also be found on computers, such as email and messaging.
Although Samsung was warmly welcomed into the fold by Symbian, the South Korean company told Reuters it regards Symbian as only one of three main software platforms for advanced mobile phones that can handle email, calendars and play audio and video.
Samsung will continue to work with Microsoft software to develop similar "smart" phones. It already has a handheld computer with a built-in phone that runs software from the third main software vendor in this arena, U.S.-based Palm.
"We're putting our chips on multiple players. Our current strategy is to target all three platforms. But eventually the market will center around one of them, and we will support whichever platform that is," Eric Kim, Samsung's global marketing director told Reuters in an interview on the fringes of the CeBIT technology fair in the German city of Hanover.
Shares in Britain's Psion, which owns 28.1 percent of Symbian stock while Motorola, Nokia (news - web sites) and Sony Ericsson (news - web sites) each hold 21 percent, jumped over four percent after the Samsung news.
But the shares retreated as investors digested Psion's poor results, published Thursday, and the stock fell 4.4 percent.
Big Catch
Samsung was Microsoft's big catch when it announced the Korean company's support for its Smartphone software in 2001.
But despite Samsung's line-up of eight new phones for the European market which were announced at CeBIT on Wednesday, the most extensive product launch of any cellphone maker here, there was still no mention of a Microsoft product.
Microsoft's vice president in charge of telecoms activities, Pieter Knook, told Reuters that Microsoft had decided not to wait for a big brand manufacturer like Samsung to come out with products based on its software.
Microsoft now focused on ready-to-go reference designs it has developed with chip makers such as Intel and Texas Instruments. These designs allow any wireless operator to order smartphones from any contract electronics maker.
He said that Deutsche Telekom would shortly follow the example of British-based wireless operator mm02 and come out with a Microsoft-based PDA phone, built by a contract manufacturer in Taiwan.
Kim declined to say when his company would launch Microsoft products, nor did he say when he expected Symbian phones.
A mass market of tens of millions of Symbian-enabled phones was not expected this year, Symbian's Chief Financial Officer Thomas Chambers told Reuters here.
He acknowledged the take-off of its software has been slower than planned, but added all of its handset making investors were developing Symbian products. Symbian is working with operators and software developers to kickstart services, Chambers said.
Low-End Phones
Kim meanwhile said that Samsung, which has carved out a 7.9 percent global market share in 2001, up from 5.0 percent a year earlier by selling very expensive and sophisticated cellphones, will move into cheaper, low-end phones.
The low-end segment makes up some 70 percent of the total cellphone market. Samsung, which aspires to become a global market leader, needs cheap models as well as expensive ones.
"As a newcomer we have focused on mid and high-end phones. We don't have the existing brand strength like Nokia. Our strategy is therefore to bring premium phones that gives us brand credibility. As we achieve that, we probably want to extend that position to a broader market," Kim said. <<
- Eric - |
