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Samsung to catch up to smartphone wave

BARCELONA, Spain - South Korean firm Samsung Electronics unveiled on Sunday a new smartphone to lead the charge in its strategy to boost its share of the fast-growing segment of the mobile phone industry.

The firm unveiled the slick Samsung Wave smartphone at a launch party in Barcelona, Spain, on the eve of the industry’s biggest annual gathering, the Mobile World Congress.

The phone, to be launched in May, is the first device fitted with Samsung’s new mobile operating system, Bada, which was unveiled late last year.

“This is a new era, the smartphone era,” JK Shin, Samsung Electronics head of mobile communications business, said at the event, which featured a huge video presentation with splashing waves and a live dance act.

“Samsung is committed to making the smartphone era available for everyone. We are committed to making the smartphone era a true democracy for billions of people on all continents in all corners of the world,” Shin said.

Jean-Philippe Illarine, telecommunications marketing director at Samsung Electronics France, told AFP the Wave would be the crown jewel of about 15 smartphones that Samsung will launch this year. No sale price was released.

The company aims to sell 18 million smartphones this year, tripling last year’s figure, Illarine said.

Samsung, with a 20.1 percent share of the mobile phone market last year, is the world’s number two mobile phone maker after Finland’s Nokia, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.

But it only captured 3.2 percent of the smartphone market in the third quarter of last year, according to Gartner.

“Smartphones are sort of our weak point,” Illarine said.

Consumers have shown a big appetite for smartphones — handsets often fitted with a touch screen that allows web browsing, videos, music and much more.

Global shipments of handsets jumped 30 percent in the last quarter of last year compared to the same period in 2008, according to Strategy Analytics.

And while handset sales are expected to grow by nine percent this year, smartphones will skyrocket by 46 percent, according to Gartner.

The Samsung Wave has a 3.3-inch long touch screen with a five-megapixel camera, high-definition video and the all-important applications store, which allows users to download games and news programs.

Shin said the Samsung applications store, which was launched in France, Britain and Italy last year, would be available in more than 50 countries this year.

The Wave is among around five Banda smartphones to be launched this year, Illarine said.

Samsung will also release five or six other smartphones this year powered by Internet giant Google’s Android operating system and a few more with Microsoft Windows.