February 4, Samsung finally announced its first Android phone, the SHW-M100S in Korea. This is the second Android phone released in the country after Motorola's MotoRoi on January 18. Many Koreans expect to have those Android phones after the release of the Apple iPhone last December.

Why? Apple iPhone 3GS has hit the Korean smartphone market with a big impact in such a short period. 0.3 million units were sold in just two months. And it's still picking up approximately 3,000 units everyday. People are starting to look for alternative choices against Apple's iPhone 3GS and finding Google's mobile platform Android, which wasn't available in phones in Korea yet at that time.

MotoRoi already reaching 10,000 preorders (by January 30). However, MotoRoi may find it difficult to make its own way because Samsung has just entered this market with the latest and full-featured Android phone.

Video calling is available with SHW-M100S, which is the first in Android phones. Samsung has the ability to develop several applications for its Android phones, especially for the Korean market, but this isn't the case with Motorola, I guess.



Here is a rough comparison of Samsung's SHW-M100S, Motorola's MotoRoi and Apple's iPhone 3GS.



During this Android phone announcement, Samsung presented its strategy for smartphone lines in 2010 worldwide. Samsung will focus on the smartphone market, targeting to achieve 18 million units worldwide, an increase of three times more than 2009. Samsung will launch its own platform, Bada, with Bada-based smartphones the next month starting with the European Union (EU) market and it will come with WVGA (800 x 480) AMOLED display, full touch, 8-megapixel camera, Bluetooth 3.0, 1GHz CPU.

Samsung is the only company that takes all kinds of smartphone platforms on its smartphones, like Symbian, Win Mobile, Android and Bada except for the iPhone OS. I think there is a possibility Samsung will achieve its goal in 2010, since it is playing on all the platforms, but this may cause difficulty in following and focusing on sudden platforms including its own Bada. Samsung may have to focus on Android at this moment beside Bada to survive in this smartphone market worldwide.

Samsung opens up its app store in 50 countries to support its smartphones and customers. Let's see if this app store can stand alone beside Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market as its hopes.

Samsung is the No. 2 mobile phone manufacturer in the world. Hopefully, it can show us something very new against other vendors like Google, HTC and Apple.