Samsung Promises Feature-filled Mobile TV Phone Soon

TechWeb write about Samsung's intentions "to make digital TV phones available in Europe this month that can receive programs broadcast on a Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) network. The tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE handset, which will ship just in time for the World Cup tournament in Germany, has a 2.0 mega-pixel camera, stereo speakers, Bluetooth capabilities, and about 128MB of memory allows the phone to record and save TV broadcasts, videos and games."

Roger Entner at Ovum said, "You really need more memory because if you use the phone to listen to music or watch video, 128MB isn't a lot. One minute of video is 1MB. A song is 3MB. The Apple iTunes phone only has the capacity for 100 songs. And that really isn't enough."

The Samsung SGH-Z400 handset is likely to ship first in Korea and "will support the 3G data transfer system known as high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA). The new slider phone features access to news, stock figures, and music videos or movie trailers."

Susan Kalla at Caris & Co. predicted, "Total, Samsung should ship about 115 million phones this year, and take approximately 12 percent global market share." She estimated "40 million smart phones will ship in 2006 globally, about 5 percent could belong to Samsung."