The Sydney 2000 Olympic games will provide the platform for electronics manufacturer Samsung to launch a year-long $310 million marketing campaign in 35 countries - and a showcase for the Korean giant's mobile phone technology.
The relatively new worldwide Olympics partner, signed just two years ago, will provide all the wireless networking hardware required for the Sydney Games, as it did for the Nagano Winter Olympics.
The company is also close to selecting a model of mobile phone to be provided free to Olympic athletes and organisers during the games. Phones were provided to athletes during the Nagano games.
Samsung is also building a meeting centre for athletes to relax with friends and family during the three weeks of competition. The meeting place, called Olympic Rendezvous@Samsung, will double as a showcase for Samsung mobile technology, such as wristwatch phones, Internet phones and state-of-the-art pagers.
"Samsung will bring the Olympic experience to people all over the world," Jong-Yong Yun, president and CEO of Samsung said at the campaign launch. Samsung will be providing wireless technology for "officials, athletes and media".
The wireless service provided at the games, in conjunction with Olympic sponsors IBM and Telstra, will also include an information broadcast to mobiles including sporting results and medal tallies. Samsung executives said no decision had been made on the particular technology to be used for this service.
Samsung is likely to choose a phone called the Mini Folder SCH A-100 - a lightweight unit with in-built 'privacy protection' for stored phone directories and personal information. Samsung expects to launch this phone in Australia next June.
Samsung will provide about 25,000 mobiles for the games and will set up at least 40 service and support venues throughout Sydney. About 10,000 mobiles will be available for rent during the games.
Samsung's marketing banner for September 1999 through to October 2000 is 'Samsung Digitall - everyone's invited'.
"This should be the biggest project we have ever conducted," said company executives at a press conference following the launch on Monday.
"We usually spend about US$200 million for marketing globally and our total brand image goes up two percent annually. So we have to use our sponsorships to build up brand images. We are a little bit late in the telecommunications industry compared to Ericsson and Nokia. By the end of the Sydney Olympics our brand image should have risen by more than four percent. Image contributes to our sales," a spokesman said.
Samsung has 29 percent of the worldwide market place for the CDMA (code division multiple access) standard-based phones. The company's Australian sales target for CDMA phones is 50,000 units and for GSM-based phones, 20,000 units, this year. Next year, the company expects to sell three times the number of CDMA phones and about 50,000 GSM phones.
