It has been more than half a year since the launch of the DuoS series of mobile phones by Samsung. These devices are designed to operate with two SIM cards simultaneously. Smape.com was the first source to carry out a test on the sole member of this product family – the D880 (see Samsung DuoS D880 review). Long before the sales began, we foresaw a high demand for this one, even regardless of its high price. We were very content to learn that our understanding of the model's market prospect proved true and the winning concept pushed the product to the top lines in the sales charts.

We have already published an article offering a detailed comparison between the model in question and its closest competitors Fly B700 Duo and Philips Xenium 9@9w (see Dual-SIM handsets compared), of which Samsung's creation proved the best, but this was rather cold comfort perfectly compensated by the enormously high price on the other hand. An inexpensive DuoS model is expected to be announced by May, the closest possible analogue is Fly B700 Duo. Despite all the plans of Motorola and Sony Ericsson, the Samsung company retains its title as the only brand from the world's five leading which succeeded in releasing a dual-SIM phone and takes active preparations to enter the low-end segment of this market.
 

 
 Yoonsoo Kim, the executive manager of the Russian division of the telecommunications department of the Samsung company.

Samsung are planning to outpace the current sales leader on the Russian market, Nokia, by the end of this year, one of the practical reasons for this being as follows: more dual-SIM products will emerge since the concept proved to be extremely popular with the consumers, even a dual-SIM smartphone is currently in the works. We had a brief interview with Yoonsoo Kim, the executive manager of the Russian division of Samsung's telecom department. We offer you the hottest news concerning the DuoS technology and its further development in Samsung products recorded firsthand exclusive for the visitors of Smape.com:
 

- Why was the announced P720 DuoS model, presumably equipped with a touchscreen, cancelled?
- Indeed we took the decision to cancel the issue due to our strong belief in the supremacy of our quality standards over any other concerns. We didn't want to compromise with the side effects of employing a touchscreen unit which would prevent us from implementing the Dual-SIM technology on a reliable, high-quality level. The software incompatibilities that came to cripple the device's functionality stem from the conflict between the Asian-targeted design approach, - standing for the touch input and a number of other features popular in the target region, - and the actual hardware limitations of the platform, which inherits much of its features from the previous model in the line – the Samsung-Armani joint product P520. The hardware and software parts would never come to terms if we tried to stick the dual-SIM support between the two, so we preferred to drop the idea in favor of keeping the touch support as demanded by our region-specific marketing policy. We did our best to try and keep the dual-SIM feature in, but what we were getting as a result were constant SIM swapping glitches, along with the side effect a thicker case. It was natural for us not to stake the reputation of D880 because of the ambitions, so we took the dual-SIM support out and got back to a more traditional concept.

- When the less expensive DuoS models are expected to appear?
- We carried out a good number of market inquiries, exposing three main reasons to have two SIM cards in a single phone, as reported by the customers. One of those is the opportunity to save money by switching between different billing schemes assigned to different SIM cards. For this group of customers, the expensive D880 is obviously a no go because of its high price. When we launched the first DuoS model in November 2007, we announced our intention to expand the series to the less expensive sectors. However the flagship's success was so enormous that we decided to put the plans on hold not to interfere with the model's high sales volumes – the appearance of a cheaper analogue could do more harm than good at that time. Now it looks like the proper time to launch the junior models has come, especially because the rival companies have already manifested their presence in this particular market sector. We can now state for sure that we will release a number of new DuoS models by the end of the year, a candy bar about 20-30% less expensive than D880 is planned to appear in the second quarter. If things don't go wrong, it will appear in May.

- Are any models supporting more than two SIM cards planned for release?
- The current technologies allow that, though none of our plans provide for such releases. Our market study shows that a significant number of consumers have more than two SIM cards, but each additional SIM card in a cell phone makes it thicker, obviously resulting in something unwieldy – the hypothetical three-SIM handset would be about 20 mm thick, which severely cripples the ergonomics, so there's little hope anything of the kind would sport good sales. That's why we prefer to keep the focus on the dual-SIM concept. Don't expect anything more than that in the nearest future. The best way for the company right now is to expand the portfolio with more dual-SIM models, rather than trying to invent three- or four-SIM phones. These won't be considered a possible idea until the technology evolves to a level where no side effects on ergonomics and functionality will occur.

- What do Samsung's plans for the other countries sound like?
- The concept proved so successful that a number of countries are trying to negotiate shipments of DuoS products via Russia, since the series was designed exclusively for this particular region and originally wasn't planned to sell outside Russia and probably some of the bordering countries. Funny enough, there were a few sightings of the so-called rogue copies of D880 in Canada, so it's obvious that it's impossible and unreasonable to keep the series from spreading all over the world as long as lots of people want to get the hold of a DuoS phone. The problem with the major part of Europe is that the European carrier companies feel very reluctant about leaving their clients an opportunity to utilize the rival's services simultaneously with their own, thus losing money. We were able to get on terms with O2 and Vodafone, though. Countries lacking a developed carrier company culture obviously fall out of the question. Massive shipments of DuoS phones are officially planned to the regions of South Asia and Far East in the nearest future.
 

- Have you ever considered the idea of making a DuoS-powered PDA or smartphone?
- Both Symbian and Windows Mobile platform are now on the company's priority list. We pay equal attention to this direction on par with the multimedia and premium segments. That's why we are now actively advancing on the front of smart devices, hopefully a DuoS-powered smartphone is planned to appear this year. This will be a business phone based off Microsoft's platform. However we see no reasons to refrain from designing a Symbian-based DuoS phone in the future, though this will hardly take place before the next year. At least nothing like that is in the official plans right now.

- Will the software part of DuoS phones go through any massive changes in the future.
- All of our Dual-SIM devices will come with a dedicated button for switching between the two SIM cards and a corresponding settings menu, just like in D880. Even the budget models won't have anything of this cut. Moreover, the user interface, namely the part concerning the specific dual-SIM functions, will be optimized for a friendlier look and feel. It's possible that a hot SIM-swapping feature will be included, eliminating the necessity to reboot the phone on switching to the alternate SIM card. However this will hardly happen in the closest future, for the next few months we'll be sticking to the established scheme. As you have mentioned on your site Smape.com. So far this is the most user friendly approach among all solutions currently available on the market.

- Thank you for informing us and our readers of your future plans, Mr. Kim.