Samsung has announced that it will offer technical support to its online music partners Microsoft, Napster and Yahoo to help sales of its portable music players.

The company will provide support to allow its partners to offer "easier and fancier" services to compete more strongly with Apple's iTunes.

But despite earlier reports, Samsung said that it is not planning to launch its own online music download services.

"We are not interested in the online music services market but we plan to offer technical support to our partners to make their services easier and fancier which should increase our hardware sales," Choi Gee-sung, president of Samsung's digital media division, told reporters after a meeting with analysts.

The move is a clear attempt to challenge Apple's supremacy in the sector, and the question of compatibility is uppermost.

"I believe that our music players are compatible with iPod but our partners have failed to provide competitive software like iTunes," said Gee-sung.

Samsung aims to treble its MP3 player sales to more than five million units this year, a target which represents only a sixth of the expected 2005 sales of the iPod.