Samsung hopes to have Google phone early 2009

BARCELONA (Reuters) - Korea's Samsung Electronics hopes to have a phone based on Google's Android mobile phone software platform by early next year, it said at the Mobile World Congress on Monday.

Samsung added that it expected to have four or five WiMax phones out this year. WiMax is a wireless technology similar to WiFi but with longer range and stronger signals.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew; Editing by Quentin Bryar)