On a cool Monday evening, students hurried across Shinchon, a university district in western Seoul.
At the district's Anycall Studio, three schoolgirls were giggling while snapping pictures with a 10-megapixel camera phone, and having them printed on the spot.
A young man examined a play station and tested a few handset games shown on a liquid-crystal-display television.
PHOTO: JASON TAN, TAIPEI TIMES
With a price tag of US$2 million, the two-story studio is Samsung Electronics Co's one-and-only handset brand store in South Korea, showcasing the latest mobile phones, including award-winning handsets and overseas models.
The second studio is located in Shanghai. In addition, Samsung Galleries in Moscow and New York showcase Samsung's complete lineup, including Anycall branded phones.
"Selling phones isn't the showrooms' purpose. We want to offer convenience to consumers, letting them know how mobile phones can interact with their daily lives," Ryu Jae-hyun, Samsung Taiwan's director of mobile communication, told the Taipei Times during a media trip to Seoul last week.
By the second half of the year, the Seoul store will be copied in Taipei's bustling commercial Xinyi District.
The Taipei store will be on a smaller scale, but the presence is definitely important to prove Samsung's commitment to the local market, said Ryu, who has been posted in Taipei for more than two years.
Despite being a late entrant into Taiwan's market, Samsung has managed to clinch the No. 4 position after Nokia Oyj, Motorola Inc and Sony Ericsson.
The South Korean chaebol broke the 10 percent mark by securing a 11. 3 percent share in March, up from 8.1 percent last October.
"We came to Taiwan later than others, that's why awareness of the Anycall brand is slightly lagging," said Roh Ki-hak, Samsung's senior vice president of mobile communication.
But it is setting an ambitious goal to secure a 15 percent share by the end of the year by selling a total of 1 million phones in Taiwan, he said.
Thanks to the high-end Ultra edition phones launched last year, Samsung sold 34.8 million worldwide in the first three months of this year, a quarterly record for the company -- despite an overall seasonal market shrinkage.
Riding on the successful Ultra edition series, Samsung will debut the F308, a new mobile phone model its says is the first to offer both a phone and portable music player in a dual-faced design.
The combination of phone and music player is a desirable but complicated function, which meant that the design team had to create a simple, clear cut interface for users, Lee Kyung-jin, a designer at Samsung's mobile communication division, said during a phone launch in the company's Seoul office last week.
The F308 is a cellphone on one side, but flip it over and the user has a music player at their fingertips.
Samsung, the world's third-largest handset brand, sold 118 million handsets worldwide last year, up from 103 million in 2005 and 86.5 million units in 2004, the company's statistics showed.
"We aim to sell 135 million units this year and chances are high that we will surpass that number," Roh said.
Phone makers including Samsung are trying to cash in at the expense of Motorola, as the No. 2 maker undergoes restructuring to recover from sagging sales after the glory of its hit Razr line of phones faded.
To cope with the increase in demand, Samsung said last Tuesday it would invest 200 billion won (US$216.4 million) into increasing output at its Gumi plant -- Samsung's only domestic handset facility approximately 260km southeast of Seoul.
The output from Gumi will rise to 75 million units this year from 69 million last year.
It is also considering several locations, including Vietnam, for its next overseas handset plant, adding to the current facilities in China, India and Brazil.
The next growth momentum will come from emerging markets, including China, India and Africa, Roh said.
"Users in these markets need lower-end phones. When we launch such products, we will add differentiation to our low-end phones to make them stand out," he said.
But industry watchers said competition is fierce.
"Samsung's Ultra edition phones are well received but rivals like LG or Motorola also focus on slim phones," Fox Su (
However, Lee is convinced that Samsung phones will continue to enjoy high popularity.
"Handsets are no longer merely a communication item. We create brand originality in our phones by adding the element of sensibility'," Lee said.
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