Could the king of the Android smart phones be about to drop?

The Samsung Galaxy S III phone will be announced in London at 7pm on 3 May at Earls Court.

An invite to the Samsung event in was published by Dutch site Tweakers.net The detail-free invitation simply reads "Come and meet the next Galaxy".

The event which will be livestreamed from Samsung's Facebook page coincides with the final night of BlackBerry World, the RIM phone fest that will be held in Orlando Florida from 1 May to 3 May.

Earlier this year, Apple similarly gazumped Google's big news broadcast at Mobile World Congress, releasing invitations to the launch of the new iPad during Google chief Eric Schmidt's keynote address.

The rumours:

The Samsung Galaxy III is rumoured to feature a powerful quad-core processor for lightning fast video, gameplay and multi-tasking.

The Samsung Galaxy II is a market-leading android phone, and launched with a price of £500 at launch, and the Galaxy III is expected to be priced to match this higher end of the market.

The Galaxy II now costs around £31 per month on Orange, or around £320 outright, so the phone should also drop in price fairly quickly.

The operating system is expected to be Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android, and the OS found in Google's Galaxy Nexus phone.

Samsung Galaxy III is not, as rumour had it, the Samsung i9300. Images of that phone were leaked last week, but speculation has moved on from thinking that it is the phone that will be released in London.

What do you make of Samsung's latest, and mysterious, announcement? Let us know in comments below.