Smartphone rivals try to steal iPhone's thunder

Korean technology group Samsung launched a new touch-screen smartphone on Monday, hours before Apple Inc. was expected to unveil a new version of the iPhone.

The new smartphone, called Omnia, is similar to the iPhone, with a wide screen for viewing video and browsing the internet. It also has a five megapixel camera and runsMicrosoft Windows Mobile software.

The company said the Omnia will be officially unveiled on June 17 at a trade fair in Singapore and will go on sale in Asia that week and in Europe in July.

Samsung is not the only company set to release a touch-screen smartphone. Waterloo-based Blackberry maker Research in Motion is expected to release a new device, called the Thunder, in the third quarter of this year.

On Sunday the technology blog The Boy Genius Report published the first images of the device, which like the Omnia and iPhone appears to eschew a QWERTY keyboard for a touch interface.

That Samsung's advance announcement comes on the same day Apple is expected to release details of a newer iPhone capable of working on faster, third-generation wireless networks is a sign of how seriously rival handset makers are treating Apple.

Apple has sold more than five million iPhones so far and in the year since its U.S. launch has grabbed 28 per cent of the U.S. market in smartphones,though its global impact has been much smaller, with analyst firm Gartner putting its share of theworld market at aboutfive per cent through the first quarter of 2008.