The Hindu Kolkata, August 28, 2009 Samsung on Friday launched the country’s first open market handset (OMH) phone Mpower 699 in co-operation with Qualcomm at an event in Kolkata. The OMH technology gives mobile customers the flexibility to buy a CDMA handset and SIM cards from various CDMA operators of their choice. Announcing the launch of Samsung MPower 699 in the Indian market, Jung Soo Shin, president & CEO Samsung South West Asia, said that the launch marked a paradigm shift in the dynamics of the CDMA ecosystem with consumers now having the flexibility to choose an operator. Sunil Dutt, country head Samsung Telecom Division, Samsung India Electronics Ltd said that last year, Samsung took the first step towards giving consumers flexibility in CDMA by launching MPower series handsets to work with CDMA connections from operators, Reliance Mobile, Tata Indicom and Virgin Mobile. Mr Shin said that the introduction of OMH will lead to common development standards and inter-operability for all CDMA networks globally. A company release said that MPower 699 will support Tata Indicom, Reliance Mobile, MTS and Virgin Mobile services on their OMH SIM cards. It was also stated that the switch-over process to new OMH SIM cards from existing R-UIM/SIM connections was very easy and the new OMH phone also supports the existing SIM for voice and SMS as well as data services.