Samsung puts 3G in the picture
Mon 4 Jun 2001
Guy Dresser, The Scotsman
Europe may be talking about the launch some time of third-generation mobile telephony but 3G - or near-3G at least - is already a reality in South Korea.
Wireless service provider KTF is running just such a service on the IS95 network, which can be accessed via new mobile phones launched by the electronics division of Samsung.
The handsets represent a significant advance on technology in use elsewhere - as well as a major achievement for South Korea, which has beaten not just the Europeans but also the Japanese, who are still only at trial stage, to market with a commercially available service.
Samsung’s 2.5G handset for CDMA200-1x (code division multiple access) service is equipped with video-on-demand and audio-on-demand functions.
The ability to provide video-on-demand means users will be able to obtain a wide range of new services through their handsets using the multi-media streaming technology. This will include web casting, broadcast snippets of news, sports replays or weather forecasts, music videos and, in due course, two-way video conferencing.
It is early days as far as applications for the video-on-demand technology go, but Chang Soo Choi, vice-president of international sales at Samsung’s mobile communications division, is bullish: "This is going to be a very substantial market for us. When full colour is developed for handsets, public imagination will take demand to a new level.
"It all depends, of course, on the development of content as well as types of programming and the billing mechanisms decided on. But the handset marks a real advance - it achieves what some previously thought impossible."
Emblaze Systems, formerly known as Geo Interactive Media, is the Israeli-based but London-listed developer of wireless solutions for video streaming and supplies the video-chip technology that enables Samsung’s new handsets to receive video images.
The company’s demonstration of the technology at a launch event for analysts and potential customers in Seoul last week was only partially successful, due to interference from the conference building itself. Unlike BT’s embarrassing GPRS debacle a few weeks ago, however, chief executive Eli Reifman was able to make it work on a handset outside the conference hall.
"Never mind the sceptics or those who have been hyping their own product but have nothing to show for it," he said. "This is a 3G service at work - it is here, now, and commercially available in Korea."
True 3G will not be in place until the launch of universal mobile telecoms system in Europe and CDMA 2000 in Asia, but the KTF service in Korea, which can be obtained using the Samsung handsets, is a real advance on the existing technology.
Samsung is one of several telecoms equipment companies conducting extensive research and development in the 3G arena, and the stakes are high. According to analysis by Dataquest, only a handful of the existing players will survive to challenge industry giant Nokia.
With a five per cent market share, Samsung lags behind Nokia’s 31 per cent, but others, including Ericsson (10 per cent), Siemens (seven per cent), Alcatel (six per cent) and Matsushita (eight per cent) are not far ahead. Samsung’s near-3G launch marks the latest in a line of hi-tech mobile phones from the company. It is poised to roll out its SGH-Q100 general pack-et radio service (GPRS) handset in Europe.
T-Mobile launches 2.5G operations in Germany this month, becoming Samsung’s first major GPRS customer in Europe. Samsung hopes GPRS phone sales in Germany will exceed those of 2G handsets within years and itis aiming for 25 per cent of the market.
Daniel Chung, senior manager in Samsung Electronics’ overseas division, said: "We are not sitting back in this market - we have here in Korea the first commercialised CDMA technology in the world and now we have achieved a first with video streaming on to handsets.
Following the financial crisis of 1997, people thought Korea was out of the race, that we were dead. But we are not, and this launch proves that."
The Samsung handsets are available across Seoul, priced at about 700,000 won (£380). At this cost, consumers are unlikely to be clearing the shelves, but the development of must-have video services ("killer applications" in the lingo of the technologists) should change all that.
Emblaze’s Reifman said: "Having the right applications matters, but they’ll come with time. The cost of the handset may look expensive but, as with many new technologies, these will be targeted at the premium end of the market first."
Some telecoms operators are dubious about the predictions for growth in take-up of 3G services when they are eventually launched. But the sceptics are mainly in Europe, where telecoms firms have mostly overpaid for licences.
One Samsung executive said privately: "Here we can see the services coming and the handset technology is becoming available. This will also happen in Europe but probably not as quickly as the operators would like."
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