SEOUL (Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp (S.N: Quote, Profile, Research), which recently said it would spend up to $5 billion on a mobile high-speed wireless standard by 2010, said it had awarded the New York WiMax market to Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (005930.KS: Quote, Profile, Research).

Samsung had previously been awarded the Washington, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Providence, R.I. and Boston markets as part of Sprint’s push to use the mobile WiMax wireless standard.

“Those are very good markets that we’ve given to Samsung,” Barry West, president of Sprint’s high speed wireless unit, told Reuters on Monday after Samsung made the official announcement on the sidelines of the Samsung 4G Forum.

Samsung officials also sounded an upbeat note, with Choi Gee-sung, president of its telecommunications unit, saying the mobile WiMax business could turn profitable within the next 3 to 5 years.

Samsung in a news release separately predicted its handset sales would top 40 million units in the third quarter, after selling a record 37.4 million handsets in the second quarter.

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