19. Telecommunications: Samsung straddles the cellular world in a unique position of strength

Mobile phones have already revolutionized the way we talk, allowing us to get in touch wherever we are, whatever we are doing.

In the space of a few short years it has moved from costly business tool to household object, used as much for chatting with family and friends as for vital commercial communication.

But this is only the start. If you think the current pocket phones are miniature marvels, wait until the next generation begins to arrive in the next four or five years.

They will have big, color screens, allowing you to surf the Web at lightning speed. They will have cameras, so you will be able to use it as a videophone or simply take pictures and send them off as attachments to e-mails.

The phone will be able to recognize your voice, so you won't need to punch keys, and it will remember all your phone numbers for you.

For business users, the new mobile will have a huge capacity for data -much higher than today's fastest landline modems. So computing wherever you are - on an oilrig, on the farm or simply at a customer's office will be made as simple as clicking a button.

The road map towards this mobile nirvana is now being agreed internationally, at the International Telecommunications Union. Under the trade name IMT 2000, the world's mobile phone network operators and manufacturers are devising a universal standard for the link between a phone and the network, known as the air interface, that will allow anyone with a mobile phone and subscription to get a line anywhere in the world.

CDMA LEADER. One of the companies leading these changes is Samsung, the giant Korean multinational enterprise, which has а comprehensive telecommunications capability ranging from exchange equipment, network systems and cellular infrastructure to consumer equipment such as digital mobile handsets and cordless phones. The company's main involvement has been with the CDMA standard used in North America and the Pacific Rim, but is also well known for innovative handsets using the GSM standard.

In 1996 Samsung established the first commercial CDMA cellular service

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in the world. That same year, the company shipped the first CDMA digital handsets to Sprint in the United Slates and is now the largest handset provider in the U.S. with customers including Airtouch. In Australia, Hutchison Telecom has ordered an entire Samsung CDMA system from network to handsets.

According to DataQuest, in 1998 Samsung sold 5 million CDMA handsets, 28.5% of the 18 million total sold worldwide, making it the world's largest supplier. It is also estimated that Samsung sold 6 million handsets in the first half of 1999 and anticipates that the company will retain its No.1 spot for the third year running, with a 40% market share this year.

Unusually in a mobile world that is polarized between GSM and CDMA. Samsung also has a significant GSM capability, mainly as a handset supplier. The tiny, lightweight nature of some of their smallest phones has collected a shower of awards from Europe's most authoritative mobile phone magazines. European network operators including Italy's TIM, Britain's Vodafone, France's FTM, Portugal's TMN and Austria's Mobilkom have chosen Samsung handsets, attracted as much by their features, such as voice activated dialing, as by their jewel-like design.

HIGH SPEED DATA. It is a time of rapid technical change in the world mobile phone market, happening mainly to cope with a huge and so far untapped appetite for data on the move. People want to have access to their e-mail and to the Web wherever they happen to be.

CDMA services around the world are due to be upgraded by the adoption of technologies such as B-CDMA, that can handle data speeds to two megabits a second (compare that with the 56 kilobits a second available with the fastest analogue modems available today).

Even higher speeds are promised by Wideband, providing higher quality voice, higher speed data, video arid multimedia. The technology has been developed by a consortium of Lucent Technologies, Motorola, Nortel and Qualcomm, which Samsung joined in 1997.

Samsung has also developed innovative infrastructure systems including miniature base stations that provide cellular and PCS operators with an exceptionally compact, high-capacity base station platform.

Samsung is therefore well placed to benefit from the third generation standard as it emerges. For the average phone user, it will mean phones that do almost anything, almost everywhere.

MOBILE BUSINESS. The mobile phone market is exploding worldwide as both call rates and the cost of handsets fall. In some countries, more than half the population has a mobile, and for many it is their only phone. As wireless data becomes faster and easier to use, this trend is expected to accelerate with wireless systems taking subscribers from fixed wireline networks. It is estimated that by 2003 there will be 364 million GSM subscribers and 141 million CDMA subscribers. Of these, 52% of GSM users and 20% of CDMA subscribers will be connected to wireless data networks.

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The leading technologies are CDMA in North America, Latin America, Korea and the Pacific Rim and GSM elsewhere. Adoption of CDMA has been held back by the relatively slow take-up of mobile phones in the US, where the owner of the mobile pays for receiving calls. As a result, mobiles tend to be switched off except when making outgoing calls, reducing their usage rates.

The hardware sector of the mobile phone business splits into two: handsets and infrastructure. Samsung occupies a leading position in the CDMA world, and has a significant position in the GSM world. As they come together in the third generation IMT 2000 world. Samsung is almost uniquely qualified to benefit from having a foot in both camps.

Analogue systems will fade away rapidly in the early years of the next century. Seen as prone to interference and eavesdropping, their lack of data facilities will make them very unattractive to new subscribers. In addition, the demand for radio spectrum is now intense, leading to pressure on governments to release the space they occupy for more advanced systems.

FUTURE PHONES. Science fiction is having difficulty keeping ahead of reality these days. Mobile phones with features that seemed physically impossible only a few years ago are hitting the shops. Dick Tracy's wristwatch phone, for example. How we all envied his ability to make calls just by talking into his watch - and Samsung launched one earlier this year.

The phone weighs just 30g, but has all the features of a full-size phone including voice activated dialing and a number store, so no keypad is necessary. The battery gives 90 minutes of continuous call time and 60 hours of standby, better than many full size mobiles.

Keeping your phone strapped to your wrist has many practical advantages, not least that it is difficult lo lose. And, of course, it tells the lime.

All phones will soon use the new Wireless Application Protocol or WAP, a standard for cut down websites that can accessed easily by mobile phones with limited data speed and small screens.

Mobile phones using WAP can do much more.