At ten times the pledge of the other phone manufacturers, Skarzynski
was worried the gift would come off as a pay-for-play deal. That’s certainly
what it looked like. Skarzynski said he just wanted to show a commitment
to Cingular. So he told Cingular, “We don’t want you to advertise that we
gave this amount to you. Simple as that.”
The strategy worked. Cingular needed a manufacturer that could be the
engine of its 3G initiative, and Samsung was the first to offer it, with
Samsung’s BlackJack phone, an early smartphone designed to compete with
BlackBerry.
But the name “BlackJack” was too close to the name of the BlackBerry.
Research in Motion (RIM), the maker of the BlackBerry, filed a lawsuit. So
Samsung settled the lawsuit and eventually renamed the phone “Jack.”
But bottom line, Samsung became a big supplier to Cingular for its 3G
push.