Samsung in talks to sell phones to Sprint


Samsung already fulfilled a deal to send Sprint 8 million cell phone handsets

SEOUL, South Korea (Reuters) -- Samsung Electronics is in talks to sell 2.5-generation mobile phones to U.S. telecom company Sprint Corp.

"We are still in talks and no contract has yet been made," a company spokeswoman told Reuters news agency on Friday.

She was responding to a local media report that Samsung, Korea's biggest electronics company, has signed a long-term contract to provide mobile phones worth two trillion won ($1.54 billion) to Sprint.

The Korea Economic Daily said Samsung would sell three million units of cdma2000 lx handsets to the No. 3 U.S. long-distance telephone company by the end of 2003.

Stock still ends down after morning bounce

Under a separate strategic alliance, Samsung has provided eight million mobile handsets to Sprint since 1997, the newspaper said.

Shares of Samsung, also the world's largest memory chipmaker, went up 2.6 percent at 316,000 during morning trade, after the report came out.

However it eventually lost steam, as did the Korean stock market. It ended down 0.64 percent at 306,000 won.

But that was in line with the broader Kospi index, which finished lower at 0.12 percent at 727.36.