Samsung Wave smartphone sales top 1 mln in Europe

Sales of Samsung Electronic Co.'s Wave smartphone topped 1 million in the European market four months after its debut there, industry sources said Sunday.

The 3G smartphone based Samsung's Bada open platform was first introduced in May with the GfK consumer report placing the model as one of the top three best sellers in countries such as France, Germany and Austria.

Bada, meaning ocean in Korean, is one of the latest mobile operating systems (OS) being released into the market and is in direct competition with Apple's iPhone OS and the Android being marketed by Google.

The success of the handset has been attributed to the phone's design, capabilities and localized marketing efforts that encourage people to create compatible applications.

It has a 3.3-inch Super AMOLED screen, mobile digital natural image engine, super-fast central processing unit and 5 megapixel built-in camera.

Samsung, South Korea's largest business group and a dominant force in the global memory semiconductor market, said that it plans to launch Wave 2 and Wave 2 Pro versions of the smartphone. Both products were unveiled at the Communic Asia 2010 convention in Singapore in June.

The company said it wants to introduce the Wave to the South Korean market this year.