Samsung Electronics in alliance with Qualcomm today unveiled Mpower 699 CDMA based handset in the Indian market with the main USP of the model being that it makes use of OMH technology which enables users to buy CDMA handset and SIM from various operators. The tie-up claims the model is world’s first such of a kind.

Announcing the launch of Samsung Mpower 699 in the Indian market, Mr. Jung Soo Shin, President & CEO, Samsung South West Asia HQ stated, “This OMH launch represents a paradigm shift in the dynamics of the CDMA ecosystem with consumers now having the flexibility to choose an operator at their will at any point in time. OMH empowers a CDMA customer as never before and will serve to fuel the growth in the CDMA handset market. We at Samsung are proud to be leading this innovation with Qualcomm and appreciate the support given by CDMA operators towards popularizing OMH.”

“Qualcomm congratulates Samsung for pioneering the world’s first OMH handset as well as our CDMA operator partners for launching OMH SIM cards,” said Kanwalinder Singh, Senior Vice President of Qualcomm Inc and president of Qualcomm India and South Asia. “OMH handsets, such as Samsung’s feature rich Mpower 699, play a central role in offering Indian subscribers the freedom, flexibility and choice to easily change or upgrade their handsets. With currently more than 100 million CDMA subscribers, we expect OMH to play a key role in driving the growth of CDMA in India.”

The migration to this model for existing CDMA subscribers is easy as it provides support for existing R-UIM/SIM for voice and SMS as well as data services and the OMH SIM is also backward compatible to support all previously launched CDMA handsets which support R-UIMs/SIMs.

“At Samsung, last year we took the first step towards giving consumers flexibility in CDMA by launching our Mpower series handset to work with CDMA connections from operators Reliance Mobile, Tata Indicom and Virgin Mobile. Today, true to our ‘Next is What’ philosophy, we have taken a significant step forward with the launch of the OMH compliant Mpower 699,” stated Mr. Sunil Dutt, Country Head, Samsung Telecom Division, Samsung India Electronics Ltd.

Mpower 699 is equipped with a 1.3MP Camera with video recording and advanced multimedia features such as audio player, video player and stereo FM radio, Mobile Tracker, dedicated camera key, and a 2GB MicroSD card. The model is priced at Rs 7100/-