Samsung revealed today that Sprint has awarded it the coveted New York City WiMAX contract — a market Sprint officials said it would give to the vendor with the best network performance.

At its 4G Technology Summit in Seoul, South Korea, Samsung told local media — and Sprint confirmed — it would build out the New York network, along with networks in previously disclosed markets Baltimore; Boston; Philadelphia; Providence, R.I.; and Washington, D.C. While Sprint has gradually been revealing which of its three vendors — Motorola, Nokia Siemens Networks and Samsung — will build out individual markets in its initial rollout covering 100 million people, it has kept the largest and most significant market in the U.S., New York, in reserve.

In an interview last year at WiMAX World, Barry West, chief technology officer and 4G president for Sprint, said the company was encouraging healthy competition between its WiMAX vendors. And while there would be no official “winner” of such a contest, West said, Sprint would reserve prime markets like New York for the vendors that impressed Sprint the most during their initial deployments.

“New York is such a special market from a number of perspectives,” West said in the interview. “The [radio frequency] characteristics, its size, its density — I want to make sure whatever we deploy there is rock solid.”

Sprint, however, said today that its decision to award the New York deployment was primarily for geographical reasons and not necessarily for technological or operational reasons. Given Samsung’s other market contracts in the Mid-Atlantic and New England, the vendor is clearly focused on the Northeastern seaboard. Meanwhile, Sprint is focusing Motorola on the Midwest, where it is deploying in Chicago, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Mich., Indianapolis, Kansas City and Minneapolis. Nokia, the last vendor selected, has been assigned markets in the Western states, specifically Austin, Dallas, Forth Worth and San Antonio in Texas, in addition to Denver, Portland, Salt Lake City and Seattle.

The New York deployment won’t just cover Manhattan. Sprint said the launch will cover not only the entire city but also northern New Jersey and parts of Long Island and mainland New York.