Any rumors, stories, tips, leaks or hints surrounding a Samsung Galaxy S III announcement at Mobile World Congress in the coming weeks can now be put to rest as TechRadar received a statement from Samsung directly pertaining to the launch of the Galaxy S III:

“Samsung is looking forward to introducing and demonstrating exciting new mobile products at Mobile World Congress 2012.

The successor to the GALAXY S II smartphone will be unveiled at a separate Samsung-hosted event in the first half of the year, closer to commercial availability of the product.

Samsung stays committed to providing the best possible mobile experiences for customers around the world.”

What’s truly interesting here is Samsung acknowledging the “delay” of a phone they never announced. In that regard, it’s not really a delay at all, it was our own set of expectations given that Samsung used last years Mobile World Congress to launch the uber-popular Galaxy S II. Furthermore, on January 27th, a statement by a Samsung representative during their earnings call stated that the company was “still reviewing several options” for launching their next flagship device. Given that, this quote from Samsung is hardly surprising.

There are a number of reasons we can consider for this decision by Samsung, the first being the still strong sales of the Galaxy S II and Samsung may not want to cannibalize those sales. The second consideration is that Samsung wants to delay the release to rival the next iPhone widely expected to launch over the Summer. The third and last possibility that we are considering is that Samsung is experiencing either a delay in manufacturing or is still deciding what internal hardware to use in the new device. Let’s also take note that Samsung’s current anti-Apple advertisements show they are still willing to push their current lineup and if they want a dedicated event to highlight their newest phone, who are we to complain?

TheNextWeb via Tech Radar