SINGAPORE—Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. took its turn at CommunicAsia 2006 with an announcement that it plans to produce three slim phones in a new product line the company dubbed the “Ultra Edition,” destined for Southeast Asian markets and, possibly, elsewhere.
Billing the entire lineup as the world’s “slimmest,” Samsung unveiled the D830 clamshell handset, a GSM/GPRS/EDGE phone with a 2 megapixel camera and 80 megabytes of on-board memory; the X820 candybar handset with similar features; and the D900, a slider phone with a 3 megapixel camera.
The company’s United States public relations representatives were unable to provide information on the handsets’ intended markets or pricing. The D830 is headed for Southeast Asian markets, according to the company. The pricing of the new Ultra Edition line would lend insight into Samsung’s strategy; the company, which has focused on mid- to high-tier phones, is the last of the top five handset makers to produce handsets for the entry-level tier.
Samsung is the world’s third-largest handset maker behind Motorola Inc. and Nokia Corp., and it has done slim before. Its current love affair with the slim style appears intended to ride the wave created by Motorola’s best-selling Razr, which is about 14 millimeters thick. Samsung’s new models are 7 mm (the X820), 10 mm (the D830) and 13 mm (the D900) thick. The company is currently seeing strong sales in the U.S. market with its slim t509 model available exclusively through T-Mobile USA Inc., which is nipping at the heels of the Razr in retail surveys gauging consumer interest and actual sales.
