The fourth quarter of 2012 will bring Europe a new generation of LTE smartphones from Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (LON:BC94).
The new phones include the Samsung Galaxy S III, Lumia 820 and Lumia 920 by Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK). This is great news for Europe, as their selection of LTE based smartphones is far more limited than what’s offered here in the United States.
On Tuesday morning, Everything Everywhere made an announcement that the commercial LTE service will launch sometime this year with Samsung Galaxy S III, Nokia Lumia 820, Nokia Lumia 920, HTC One XL, and Huawei’s Ascend P1 LTE.
IDC’s research manager Fransisco Jeronimo said, “The U.K. is one of the biggest markets in Europe, and the launch of commercial services there will help drive handset volumes which is what the vendors need to put out more devices.”
It is important to note that Everything Everywhere is not the only European retailer that will sell the Galaxy S III with LTE, Samsung reports that the Galaxy S III will also retail through several Nordic carriers.
The European version of Galaxy S III includes LTE and a quad-core processor- a very rare combination for smartphones. In August, LG Electronics introduced the Optimus G, another phone model with that rare combination. Both models also have 2GB of RAM. The former also features a 4.8 inch super AMOLED screen with a resolution of 1280-by-720 pixels, and Circuit-Switched Fallback. The last feature will allow smartphone users to access the internet via LTE and give them the ability to switch to 3G or GSM for phone calls. And thanks to the CS Fallback feature, users won’t have to run 3G/GSM and LTE technologies at the same time. This new feature will increase the battery life of many smartphones.
These smartphones are poised to make a big impact on smartphone sales in Europe, even long after Apple launches the iPhone 5.
