Samsung Electronics said on Monday that five of the top six U.S. service providers had agreed to sell phones from its Galaxy S range based on Google Inc's Android software.

The Galaxy S range of phones, which have high resolution screens aimed at mobile media usage, is Samsung's answer to Apple Inc's iPhone, which quickly sold 1.7 million of its latest iPhone 4 in the U.S. and other countries.

While Apple has so far limited U.S. distribution to its exclusive partner AT&T Inc, Samsung is taking the opposite approach by letting several carriers sell the Galaxy S phones all at once.

Morgan Keegan analyst Tavis McCourt said that while it was good news that so many operators were planning to offer the Samsung phone, one exclusive deal may have helped it compete better against rivals like iPhone.

It's a good sign Samsung has placement at all the major carriers but a lot of phone sales depend on how much marketing support you can get from the carriers. Exclusive products tend to get more marketing support, McCourt said.

If you want to make a big splash the exclusive phones tend to sell better at least for the first quarter or two in the U.S. market, he added.

The No. 3 U.S. mobile service Sprint Nextel Corp said its version of Galaxy X would be branded the Samsung Epic 4G.

The fact that it will be only the second U.S. phone to support Sprint's fourth generation high-speed wireless service, following the EVO phone from HTC Corp, could help sales at Sprint.

Samsung said that No. 1 U.S. mobile service Verizon Wireless, a Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc company, will sell the Fascinate Galaxy S phone, which has a mini-keyboard and a fast processor.

The Fantastic will be in addition to several other Android phones that Verizon Wireless already sells including HTC's Droid Incredible and the Droid X Motorola Inc.

Verizon wireless held a special event to announce Droid X last week and has said it will promote that phone with a major marketing campaign.

The Galaxy S model coming to the No. 4 U.S. mobile service T-Mobile USA, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, is the Vibrant, which is pre-loaded with services such as access to e-books from Amazon.com Inc, the companies said.

A touchscreen version of the device will be branded as Galaxy S for US Cellular, the sixth biggest U.S. mobile

operator.

AT&T the No. 2 U.S. mobile service said earlier this month that it would sell a Galaxy S device known as the Samsung Captivate.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew; editing by Bernard Orr)

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