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Thursday December 14, 2006
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At Samsung's press event today, I asked Samsung Telecommunications America president Dale Sohn whether they would follow Nokia's lead and start selling their coolest, high-end phones direct -- the phones so cool that US carriers refuse to pick them up. (At left, you'll see the Samsung SGH-P320 card phone, which you can buy on Dynamism.com but not through Samsung or a US carrier.) He looked visibly uncomfortable. Dale, if someone's touching you and they make you feel squirmy and wrong, that's bad touching.
Samsung recently made a stab towards consumer freedom by selling their high-end Black Carbon phone directly, unlocked -- it's an awesome black slider that Cingular and T-Mobile are ignoring. I'm still waiting for my review model. Sohn didn't give a "yes" or "no" to whether Samsung was expanding their direct-sales effort, but said that they looked forward to trying it further with more exciting design concepts and high-end phones appealing to niche markets, which sounded a lot like a "yes" to me. More thoughts after the jump.
Samsung's entire response to the question, though, had echoes of the kinds of answers you get from people in abusive relationships. They didn't want to suggest that the carriers' policies of keeping a stranglehold on sales and offering limited product lines was anything less than perfect, while at the same time they shyly admitted that, yes, they maybe do make a few phones that Americans would want to buy direct.
Earlier in the day, Samsung in-house mobile analyst Philip Garrison was a bit more direct. "Carriers - that's a love-hate relationship," he said. While some carrier execs thrill at cool fashion phones and high-end designs, carrier purchasing departments complain, "too many SKUs, too hard to handle, all those colors, we don't want to do it."
Hey Samsung, I've got a solution. Just like you did with the Black Carbon, pass your phones by the carriers to make sure they won't set towers on fire -- and then sell them direct. Wireless freedom!
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December 17, 2006 5:01 PM
I wish that Samsung will sell more unlocked phones and open the door for phones that are not sold in the US.