ASIA : LG Electronics (LGE), a ‘Dark Horse’ in the European 3G market, will launch two new tri-band (GSM/GPRS/WCDMA) mobile handsets where future mobile technological trends are unveiled.

LGE (Vice Chairman and CEO ) S.S.Kim is exhibiting two new advanced multimedia WCDMA mobile handsets, models U8100 and U8150, which integrate 2.2 inch 260,000 color TFT-LCDs, 300,000 pixel VGA built-in cameras and 64 polyphony midi chips, and which provide compatibility between 2G and 3G services.

LGE is exhibiting two new advanced multimedia WCDMA mobile handsets, models U8100 and U8150, which integrate 2.2 inch 260,000 color TFT-LCDs, 300,000 pixel VGA built-in cameras and 64 polyphony midichips, and which provide compatibility between 2G and 3G services.

As dual folder style products, U8100 and U8150 provide advanced 3Gservices such as MMS, Video telephony,VOD, WAP2.0, MPEG4 and MP3, making them true multimedia application-optimized mobile handsets. They are the smallest existing tri-band mobile handsets in the world.

For extra convenience, the two products also provide direct access keys for cameras, special edit keys, still and moving image capture functions, and speaker phone functions.

LGE expects major service providers in Europe to commercially launch 3G handsets from the 1st half of 2004 and hopes to secure leadership in the European 3G market with these new two WCDMA products.

LGE is equipped with the most advanced technologies in the field of WCDMA handsets and infrastructure. In May, 2002 at the World Cup, LGE presented a WCDMA Video Telephony demonstration to showcase its successful development of the world’s first WCDMA single model handset in early 2002.

Using LGE’s WCDMA handsets, Korean service providers successfully completed an international roaming test with J-Phone. Also, in January 2003, LGE developed the world’s first WCDMA DBDM mobile handset, which offers interoperability with CDMA2000 1X, and has been testing this with service providers in Korea.

Mr. Kwon, Sung-Tae, Executive Vice President of LGE Handset Laboratory said, “LG’s advanced WCDMA technologies were verified after the World Cup by WCDMA infrastructure companies Ericsson and Nokia in continuous systems interoperability tests.” He added: “These companies gave positive technological evaluations of LG’s WCDMA handsets”

Currently, LGE is accelerating the commercialization of its WCDMA DBDM handset (model: KW-2000) for KTF's WCDMA service launch in November this year in Korea.

Mr. Kenn (Kie Hong) Suh, Executive Vice President of LGE's Overseas Marketing Division said, “The U8100 and the U8150, which will be launched at the ITU show, offer excellent multi media function performance, as requested by service providers, as well as design and quality.” He continued, “These products are designed on a basic structure, so extended services requested by the different European 3G service providers can be added.”

LGE will expand market share in the international 3G handset industry, while positioning itself as a serious contender in the European 3G market based on its verified technologies and confidence in WCDMA.