Less than one week after the phone was released in Europe and Asia, Samsung today announced that its new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S III will be available in the U.S. before the end of June. The phone will be available on all major U.S. carriers – AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint – as well as on U.S. Cellular. The subsidized price and release date for the smartphone will be announced by each individual carrier.
[UPDATE] Verizon Wireless has already announced details on pricing and will begin accepting pre-orders on June 6 and T-Mobile has announced the smartphone will launch on June 21. Sprint has announced a June 5 pre-order date, as well as pricing identical to Verizon’s and the same June 21 release date that T-Mobile announced.
“The U.S. launch of the Galaxy S III is the most anticipated launch of the year. As promised, we are delivering the ‘next big thing’ for U.S. customers and across all major carriers,” said Dale Sohn, president of Samsung Telecommunications America. “Galaxy S III introduces new technological innovation and takes sharing to the next level.”
“Most anticipated of the year” is a bold and subjective statement. Though Apple is probably still the best at generating hype for their products, Sohn might have a point. Samsung has recently been beating Apple in terms of unit sales of smartphones, and the 9 million European and Asian pre-orders for the Galaxy S III are no accident.
The changes to the device from its European version are minimal. The U.S. version will have a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 1.5 GHz dual core processor instead of the quad core processor in the European version. Also, the amount of RAM will be doubled to 2 GB and Samsung claims that the smartphone’s 8.6 mm thickness will remain the same.
“The Galaxy S III is the most innovative smartphone on the market today. It is an industry first to see five major carriers align behind the launch of a single device virtually simultaneously,” said Todd Pendleton, chief marketing officer for Samsung Telecommunications America. “To support the immense excitement for the Galaxy S III we will execute our biggest marketing campaign ever. Consumers won’t be able to miss why this device is the must-have smartphone.”
