South Korean electronics firm Samsung is chasing overseas CDMA (code division multiple access) markets as China and Hong Kong put their networks and services in place as a precursor to third-generation (3G) telephony.
Already a dominant player on home ground, Samsung supplied most of the equipment for SK Telecom and Korea Telecom's commercial CDMA 1x service, which launched in May.
CDMA 1x delivers data at about the same speed as the GPRS (general packet radio services) system, which enables continuous high-speed connection to the Internet from handsets.
Samsung is beginning to make headway in Europe, where Germany's largest telecoms firm Deutsche Telecom - under its mobile service arm T1 - is testing Samsung's SGH-Q100 GPRS phone.
The phone, which is ready for Europe's next-generation 2.5G networks, is scheduled to go into commercial service this year.
'If everything is clear in Germany, we hope to start in Hong Kong in September.
