Galaxy S3 LTE phones to hit shelves Monday

The long-term evolution (LTE) model of Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S3 will be available nationwide from Monday.

The Suwon-based firm announced Friday its highest quarterly operating profit as of yet of 6.7 trillion won thanks to global sales of the handsets.

The three domestic mobile carriers _ SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus _ will concurrently start sales of the LTE version.

SK Telecom started sales of the third generation (3G) model last month, but industry officials expect the main sales battle between telecommunications firms to start with the LTE handset as most subscribers are jumping ship to the new network.

The marketing feud between the three and their heavy investment in building nationwide LTE networks have cost billions of won and market analysts speculate that their numbers for the second quarter maybe the worst ever.

Company representatives expect the release of the Galaxy S3 will increase revenue for the second half of the year until other new products from domestic electronics firms Pantech and LG Electronics are released in the fall to further boost earnings.

Samsung have a yet to name a sequel to the Galaxy Note, planned for the fall, and Apple is predicted to release a successor to the iPhone 4 around the same time.

The S3 is the latest model in the Galaxy series that has made the firm the No. 1 shipper of handsets worldwide.

Both the 3G and LTE models of the phone run on Google’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system and have a 1.4 gigahertz quad-core processor and a 4.8 inch super AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) screen.

The LTE model supports digital media broadcasting and boasts a higher memory and connectivity speed. <The Korea Times/Cho Mu-hyun>

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