SAMSUNG PUSHES ENVELOPE ON HANDSET FORM FACTOR, NOT TO MENTION ENHANCED      
                                    SERVICES                                    
                         (PCS Week; 04/07/99)                         

  Apr. 07, 1999 (PCS WEEK, Vol. 10, No. 14 via COMTEX) -- Mobile handsets in 
sleek, compact form factors have been described as "wearable" for some time, 
and now "wrist-worn" models- first developed by Japanese manufacturers but 
never offered for sale- may be poised to become the next big wireless hit.  
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has announced that its CDMA-based "watch phone" is 
scheduled to go on the South Korean market in April.

  The SPH-WP10 model, one of several new additions to the manufacturer's 
product line, features an ear microphone as well as several technological 
innovations that may turn up in competitors' handset offerings in the years to 
come:  a tiny fixed antenna, a miniature duplexer and a baseband analog 
processor chip that's about as small as they come.  The combination phone and 
digital watch isn't really all that small on the wrist-it measures 67 
millimeters (mm) by 58 mm by 20 mm-but weighs just 50 grams with a battery 
installed.

  To hear Samsung tell it, the SPH-WP10 isn't sacrificing much on the 
functionality side despite its size.  It will offer voice- activated dialing, a 
phone directory and a vibration alert, with talk and standby times coming in at 
90 minutes and 60 hours, respectively.

  ...A New Definition Of Dual-Mode

    Samsung expects the SPH-WP10 to be a hit with younger wireless users.  
However, the watch phone's novelty may tend to overshadow the rollout of its 
new touch-screen handset designed to combine the functions of mobile phones and 
personal digital assistants. Samsung billed this offering, also due on the 
market in April, as an "Internet phone" and said it expects to sell 1 million 
units in Korea and internationally this year.

  Developed at a cost of $4.4 million, Samsung's Internet phone packs 
technology licensed from Unwired Planet Inc. and Tegic Communications, 
providing Web access and intuitive text messaging capabilities. Another key 
feature is a very generous amount of internal memory for specialized 
applications running on the 30 mm by 70 mm touchscreen.  In this case, the 
phone shows its cultural roots with a few included features that would probably 
not make it into a future North American release.  In addition to an 80,000-
word English- Korean dictionary and 50,000-word Korean-English dictionary, the 
phone offers an extensive library of scriptural texts and liturgical music for 
either Christian or Buddhist worship, making it in all probability the world's 
first dual-faith handset.

  The handset also offers storage for up to 2,000 addresses, a 12- month 
personal calendar, and as many as 100 memos at a time.  Finally, there is a 
built-in engineering calculator that can handle trigonometry, exponential 
equations and statistical functions.

  ...Samsung Aiming At Strategies For "Nearly Saturated" Market

    The watch phone and Internet phone represent the first products to emerge 
from Samsung's market segmentation strategy, designed to respond to what it 
called "nearly saturated" conditions in the Korean wireless handset market.  
These conditions demand "new marketing approaches" to gain additional domestic 
market share, Samsung said.

  In larger terms, the new mobile devices are part and parcel of Samsung's 
marketing thrust to move closer to the top echelon of handset manufacturers-
Nokia Corp. [NOK/A], Motorola Inc. [MOT], L.M. Ericsson AB [ERICY] and 
Panasonic, the brand name for models produced by Matsushita Communication 
Industrial Co. Ltd.  Samsung, which started up CDMA handset production in 
Brazil earlier this month with the aim of turning out 400,000 units a year for 
the Latin American market, said it sold 7.4 million wireless handsets last 
year, translating into a 3.7 percent share of the global market.

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