Updated 26 May, 2012, 4:18 pm IST

Samsung Launches The World's First OMH Handset in India

28 Aug, 2009, 1:57 pm IST | by Shayne Rana |

Samsung has just announced the introduction of the world’s first OMH (Open Market Handset) phone, the Mpower 699, in the Indian market in cooperation with Qualcomm. The revolutionary OMH technology, available on the CDMA platform, gives mobile customers the flexibility to buy a CDMA handset and SIM cards from various CDMA operators of their choice. Samsung’s Mpower 699 is the world’s first CDMA phone to offer this flexibility to customers since the network settings for the CDMA connection have shifted from the phone to the OMH SIM card. In fact, all Indian CDMA operators are providing a free OMH SIM card with distinct OMH mark along with this Samsung OMH handset in the initial phase.

Announcing the launch of Samsung Mpower 699 in the Indian market, 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 switch over process to new OMH SIM cards from existing R-UIM/SIM connections is very easy, and the new OMH phone also supports the existing R-UIM/SIM for voice and SMS as well as data services. In addition, the OMH SIM too is 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.

The introduction of OMH will lead to common development standards and interoperability for all CDMA network operators globally. “Supporting OMH significantly expands the choice of handsets available to CDMA consumers and leads to faster, new product introduction within the CDMA space,” said Shin. All future Samsung CDMA handsets in the open market will support OMH.

In addition to supporting OMH, the Samsung Mpower 699 is equipped with the following feature-