The BenQ-Siemens Q-fi EF71 is one of the first mobile phones within BenQ-Siemens´ Q-fi range of music-focused devices. Q-fi products feature easy-to-use music entertainment with easy access to music functions and a plug and play, all-in-one solution for mobile music lovers.
Accordingly; the Q-fi EF71 is a fully-featured music phone with exceptionally stylish looks. With its timelessly beautiful, slim shape and high-quality aluminium surface, the clamshell phone does not compromise on design. For easy access to music functions, dedicated music keys are integrated seamlessly into the surface while enhancing the elegant appearance of the device.
Thanks to its sophisticated design, the Q-fi EF71 has won the prestigious iF-award in 2006. The music player of the Q-fi EF71 supports all current formats like MP3, AAC and WMA. Exchangeable Micro-SD cards provide ample storage space for extended listening pleasure. It is further enhanced by a 10-band equalizer that lets you customize your music which is played on innovative 3D surround speakers, allowing users to share music with friends while on the go in fine quality.
Once opened, the Q-fi EF71 features a flat, ergonomically shaped keypad and a large, brilliant 2.2 inch-internal display with 262k colours. A second, external white OLED display further enhances the elegant look of the silver and black housing.
The integrated 2.0 megapixel camera with 9x linear zoom and camcorder function lets you capture exciting moments spontaneously as photos or video. The 30 fps (frames per second) camcorder function ensures high-quality video recording and playback. Thanks to a special night mode, taking high-quality photos and videos is possible even in low light conditions. The Q-fi EF71 can even double as a webcam if connected with a computer via a USB cable.
With the Q-fi EF71, BenQ Mobile continues its strategy of offering mobile phones featuring state-of-the-art display technology, authentic materials and award-winning design. Furthermore, the Q-fi EF71 is the second device after the Q-fi EF51 within BenQ Mobile´s Q-fi range of easy to use music focused devices. The BenQ-Siemens Q-fi EF71 will be delivered with a Micro-SD card and a stereo headset. It will be available in the colour “Stellar Aluminum” in Asia from July 2006 and in Europe from September 2006. For added mobile convenience, a wide range of headsets – with and without Bluetooth technology – will be available as original accessories.-By Jonathan Cheah
Palm today announced the Palm Treo 700p smartphone, which includes hardware and software innovations centered on usability, connectivity, multimedia and compatibility. As the first Palm OS CDMA-based Treo smartphone to offer the broadband speeds of the EvDO (Evolution Data Optimized) network, the Treo 700p smartphone helps customers better balance their personal and professional lives by combining an easy-to-use mobile phone with high-speed wireless data access to web, email, business and multimedia applications.
Pricing and availability for the Palm Treo 700p smartphone will be announced later by Sprint and Verizon Wireless.
“The release of this Palm OS based product on the latest high-speed network technology is music to the ears of our dedicated installed base of Palm OS customers and clear validation that we intend to continue to focus on multiple platforms for our solutions,” said Ed Colligan, president and chief executive officer of Palm, Inc. “This flagship product - the second new smartphone Palm will introduce this calendar year - offers our world-class usability combined with a smarter phone, wireless email, built-in browser, and rich media capabilities - all at blazing speeds on the EvDO network.”
As the newest member of the Treo family, the Treo 700p smartphone combines the award-winning hardware design of the Treo 700w smartphone with Palm’s innovative software that has shipped on approximately 3 million Palm OS based Treo smartphones worldwide. Palm differentiates this smartphone from others in the Treo line by offering the following features along with many additional enhancements:
Adding a fast data connection to the already efficient Palm OS platform speeds email, messaging and large attachment downloads, and dramatically enhances web browsing. The speed of EvDO also allows for an enjoyable experience when streaming multimedia content, and the Treo 700p smartphone ships with Palm’s first built-in streaming application. The Treo 700p streams mobile content, such as live TV, movie clips and audio from radio stations, as well as training videos or company communications.
“Palm continues to deliver powerful and easy-to-use smartphones to the market, and we are pleased to be a part of the new Treo 700p smartphone with Palm OS,” said Toru Arakawa, chief executive officer, ACCESS Co., Ltd. “We believe the Palm Powered Treo smartphone, together with the wide variety of applications available from our developer community, provide a powerful mobile-computing experience.”
Treo 700p smartphone users can take advantage of broadbandlike EvDO download speeds on their laptop computers by using the new smartphone as a wireless modem via USB or Bluetooth wireless technology. This functionality may eliminate the need to purchase Wi-Fi or other connectivity services at coffee shops, airports and hotels. For the first time on any Treo product, this capability is available out of the box. Individual carriers will set pricing for appropriate data plans.
In addition to the new streaming application, the Treo 700p smartphone now includes a 1.3-megapixel camera and camcorder, offering four times the resolution of a VGA camera. To help Palm customers organize and share their photos, the new product makes it significantly easier to create and manage photo and video albums. Once albums are created, Treo 700p smartphone customers can use the slideshow application to add music, audio captions and transitions.
The Treo 700p includes Pocket Tunes from NormSoft, Inc. for playing music files. The new application, with an easy-to-use Palm-customized user interface, offers customers more options for sorting music and making play lists. With an upgrade to Pocket Tunes Deluxe, Treo 700p customers can play content from all music stores that use Microsoft’s PlaysForSure/Janus technology.
The Palm OS based Treo 700p smartphone includes 128MB of memory (60MB user available). By using SD memory cards, currently available with 2GB of storage (sold separately), in addition to the 60MB of dedicated user storage, users have plenty of room to download and carry important documents and multimedia content.
A CD in the Treo 700p smartphone box includes extra applications - some free, others for a fee - such as VoiceSignal, for users who want voice dialling, and Avvenu, for those who want access to their home- or work-computer files while on the go. A secure VPN software client is provided by anthaVPN. Anyone with downtime could appreciate games from Handmark (Solitaire) and Astraware (Bejeweled), while those with a commute may find Palm Traffic to be a useful application. For book-lovers, the CD also includes Palm eReader as well as software from Audible Inc. for listening to audio books.
New applications for the Palm OS platform continue to be developed and improved. Two recent additions include scanR, which cleans photos of whiteboards and documents and delivers the results as a PDF file, and Lower Mars’ Mobile Golf Pro, which uses the Treo 700p smartphone’s streaming application and the Blazer web browser to stream videos of golf lessons and tips. On the enterprise front, Good Technology has enhanced GoodLink’s push-email experience and security capabilities. -By Jonathan Cheah
Sony Ericsson introduces the W710 Walkman phone, which includes a motion sensor plus new fitness applications that measure your running speed, distance and time, or simply count your steps when walking.
Sporty good looks, a high performance Walkman player and easy-to-use interface all combine to make the W710 the perfect sporting partner, whether you’re running for fun or keeping a check on how much you walk each day.
Available in Performance Graphite and Hatha Violet the phone also features a 2 Megapixel camera with digital zoom and comes supplied with 512MB Memory Stick Micro (M2) - enough to keep you going through the longest walk or fitness session, although this can be expanded to 1GB if you’re left wanting more.
Fitness applications included as standard help you take your Walkman phone into new territory. The jogging application can be accessed easily from both the sub display and main display to measure both speed and distance covered while out running. There’s also a daily step counter that resets automatically at midnight and your progress is displayed even when the phone is on standby.
The user interface is easy to use while on the move. The fitness application, Walkman player and FM radio can all be controlled using the external display and the quick access keys next to it - so you don’t have to open the phone and find yourself losing concentration.
To add even more dimensions to your active life, the W710 comes with the very latest Sony Ericsson accessories. The Active Clip IAC-60 is specially designed to make the W710 accessible and comfortable to wear. Clipped to your bag, waist or arm by way of a highly adaptable strap, it makes using all the features on the W710 easy when working out.
We all know the frustration of earphones falling out when we’re on the move. With the Stereo Portable Handsfree HPM-65 that is eliminated, making it the perfect handsfree for the W710. A light design with ear hooks give a stable fit, while a standard 3.5 mm plug means you can change the earphones if you wish. As with all Walkman phones, the music mutes when the phone rings, so you need never miss a call.
Supplied Disc2Phone Music Management Software allows you to easily rip your CDs and transfer tracks from your PC to your phone. You can also transfer tracks to your phone that you’ve already ripped into your existing music libraries; just ‘drag and drop’ and the full metadata – artist, album and track – will be transferred too. When the W710 is connected to your PC with the USB cable, the PC recognises the Memory Stick Micro (M2) as an external hard drive, so you can easily and quickly transfer music files to the Memory Stick in this way.
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Now you can easily discover the title and artist of a song you’re listening to on the phone’s radio or even your own radio at home or in the car. TrackID powered by Gracenote Mobile MusicID is a new service which means you can record a few seconds of a song either via the microphone or the in built FM radio and then with one click send that clip to the Gracenote worldwide music database which will identify the track and relay the information back to the W710 phone.
The Sony Ericsson W710 is a Quad-band EDGE/GPRS Walkman phone commercially available in Performance Graphite and Hatha Violet and starts shipping during Q3 2006.-By Jonathan Cheah
Sony Ericsson’s successful Walkman phone range takes another step forward with the announcement of the UMTS enabled W850. This is Sony Ericsson’s first GSM/UMTS ‘slider’,
The W850 has been uniquely combined with a full horizontal mode camera experience and the latest Walkman player 2.0 for easy music download.
Available in Precious Black or Golden White, the phone has an attention grabbing ‘heartbeat illumination’ feature to light-up the control keys in rhythm with your music. Visually stunning and appealing to use, this phone isn’t just about good looks – it also offers blisteringly fast music downloads direct to the handset.
The phone is configured for operator over the air (OTA) music download services and accepts many popular music file formats including e-AAC+, which reduces download time and space needed for tracks. Memory isn’t an issue either with a 1GB memory stick PRO Duo supplied which is enough for around 1,000 songs in e-AAC+. This can be expanded to 4GB so that you can store a much larger music collection and have it with you all of the time.
The Walkman player 2.0 simplifies navigation through music genres, playlists, individual songs or music albums and there’s also a TrackID feature powered by Gracenote Mobile MusicID. This is a new service which means you can record a few seconds of a song, either via the microphone or the in built FM radio, and then with one click send that clip to the Gracenote worldwide music database which will identify the track and relay the information back to the phone.
“The W850 is really empowering our users to listen to what they want, wherever they are,” said Jan Wäreby, Corporate Executive Vice President, Head of Sales and Marketing, Sony Ericsson. “Many people now have existing music collections stored in MP3. The W850 allows users to identify and buy music in a new and spontaneous way – hearing tracks they like, identifying them with TrackID and downloading them to the phone.”
Sony Ericsson has also evolved the Walkman music player in ways which will appeal whether you’re a new user or already familiar with the interface. The user interface is more intuitive and makes it easy to search and play tracks as well as download them. New graphics capabilities make the experience more visual and provide music metadata and album art. And the download service is integrated, so there’s no need to come out of the music player and into the web browser to visit online music stores.
There is also a high performance 2 Megapixel camera that makes it fun to capture your favourite moments and share them with friends. Fast internet access and web browsing also make it easy to use your W850 to create and maintain blogsites, so you can keep your friends posted from wherever you are.
An impressive range of accessories means you can have even more fun out of your W850. Stereo Bluetooth headsets allow you to enjoy music in full stereo quality wire-free, and an advanced car handsfree set makes it safe to enjoy your music phone while driving. Music Desk stand speakers provide a boost to the sound to make the W850 the centre of any party.
The Sony Ericsson W850i is a UMTS 2100 and Tri-band GPRS 900/1800/1900 Walkman phone for Europe, Middle East and Africa. It is commercially available in Precious Black or Golden White and starts shipping during Q3 2006.-By Jonathan Cheah
Motorola has embarked on the Motorola-MTV Mobbed roadshow, or better known as MOTOMOB, to revolutionise the way youths use their mobile phones.
Mobbed is the ultimate expression of Mobile Culture - a highly interactive communication breakthrough dedicated to the increasingly dynamic mobile phone user community. The MOTOMOB roadshow, is the first in the South East Asia region after its official launch in Singapore last month.
The roadshow which kicked off at the Orange Club here recently in tandem with the MayDaze 2006 celebration party, is taking the mobile platform by storm to the extreme in its efforts to promote the MTV - Motorola partnership and celebrate the mobile culture.
“MOTOMOB is the ultimate mobile culture roadshow and we want to forge a closer relationship with our consumers through this platform as well as leveraging on our partnership with MTV,” Zulkifli Mat Jusoh, Marketing Manager, Motorola Mobile Devices said.
“We want to provide only the best in mobile entertainment and MOTOMOB is an ideal way to deliver real experiences to the consumer or as we call them Mobbers - highly evolved society of cool communicators who use mobile technology to live life to the fullest.”
“They will be able to get a hands-on experience and check out the MTV Mobbed. Additionally, Mobbers will be able to touch and feel the Mobbed experience through the slim Motorola SLVR L7 phone,” Zulkifli added.
MOTOMOB will next be seen at selected colleges in the Klang Valley and shopping centres around the city centre such as Bangsar, One Utama, Subang, Bukit Bintang and The Curve where Mobbers can take part in various contests and win cool prizes from MTV and Motorola.-By Jonathan Cheah
The big boys in the telecommunications industry have been urged to share with smaller players to open the industry further.
“The industry must not be controlled by a monopoly.
“The incumbents must learn how to share the access to spur the industry,” Energy, Water and Communications Minister Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik told reporters at the National Telecommunications Conference 2006 yesterday.
By incumbents, he was referring to the fixed line, mobile and wireless broadband operators in the country who have been allocated with service licences or any of the telecommunications spectrums.
The minister also said the government was looking at ways and means to reduce the dominant position of incumbent telcos, with unbundling being a key issue that needed to be tackled.
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Dr Lim Keng Yaik replying to questions at Monday's conference |
“If the infrastructure is produced by one and only one company, it is therefore a monopoly, and it will want to take advantage of its monopoly to charge monopoly prices.
“Then the regulator will have to get the monopoly to share its infrastructure with others, either by mandate or by encouraging more competition.
“It must be mandatory for the infrastructure owner to open it for access, regulated by the various parties,” he said.
Dr Lim also said that the country still had a long way to go in achieving the target of 75% broadband penetration rate for households from the current 3%.
As part of the push to increase broadband penetration, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) launched the MyICMS 886 last December.
The five-year ICT development blueprint focuses on eight services, eight infrastructure and six growth areas.
The eight services are High-Speed Broadband, 3G and Beyond, Mobile TV, Digital Multimedia Broadcasting, Digital Home, Short Range Communications using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), VoIP/ Internet Telephony and Universal Service Provisioning.
The eight infrastructure areas to be developed to support the roll-out of these services include the provisioning for hard infrastructure, such as multi-convergence networks; 3G cellular networks; satellite communications networks; the development of soft infrastructure such as Next Generation Internet protocol or IPV6; information and network security; Internet adoption; skill development; and enhanced product and design capabilities.
The six areas of growth are content development, ICT education hub, digital multimedia receivers, communication devices, embedded components and devices, and foreign ventures.
In the shorter term, MCMC is targeting household broadband penetration to reach 25%, which will mean 1.3 million subscriber lines, by year-end from the 700,000 lines currently in service.
The agency is also targeting a 50% broadband penetration rate for households by 2008.-theStar
TELEPHONE companies Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) and Maxis Communications Bhd, which are due to report their first-quarter results starting this week, may announce better net profits, analysts said.
TM, the country's most valuable phone company, is likely to record stronger net profit growth for the three months to March 31, driven by strong overseas contribution, according to most analysts.
"Overseas revenue will be one of the major drivers of TM's earnings in Q1," AmResearch analyst Fiona Leong said.
Avenue Securities telecommunications analyst Mohd Izhar Mohd Allaudin said he expects TM's first quarter to be better due to contributions from Indonesia's PT Excelcomindo and Sri Lanka's Dialog Telekom, which registered strong first-quarter numbers.
"On the flipside, revenue contribution from fixed-line could be lower, but is anticipated to be squared off by the recent access rate hike," Mohd Izhar told Business Times.
Last year, its fixed-line revenue dropped 7.4 per cent to RM6.47 billion, as against RM6.99 billion a year ago.
In a research note, an analyst said he expects TM's first-quarter net profit and revenue to post 16 per cent and 15 per cent year-on-year growth respectively.
TM made a net profit of RM374.5 million in the first quarter of 2005.
A Reuters Estimates consensus shows TM's net earnings and sales improving to RM2.08 billion and RM15.5 billion respectively for the full year to December 31 2006.
Meanwhile, the leading local mobile operator Maxis may see higher first-quarter earnings, driven by better revenues and strong subscriber growth.
Maxis, according to Reuters Estimates consensus, is expected to register about 14 per cent growth in revenue to RM7.28 billion.
It brought in 1.8 million new subscribers last year, of which 848,000 came in the fourth quarter alone, driven by price-cutting and marketing initiatives. It currently leads the industry with 7.86 million subscribers.
"First-quarter net (customer) additions will not be as strong as the first-quarter, but we expect the momentum to continue," said an analyst.
However, another analyst said Maxis may see lower first-quarter earnings due mainly to its loss-making Indonesian operation PT Natrindo Telepon Seluler (NTS). NTS is not expected to break even until 2007.
Last year, NTS recorded losses of RM73 million, and Maxis expects further losses this year because the former is in the early stages of operation.
"Its Indonesian operation will dilute part of the group earnings this year," an analyst said.
For the full year, the group is expected to post a net profit of RM1.66 billion, just marginally lower than the RM1.67 billion recorded last year, Reuters Estimates indicated.
TM and Maxis are expanding overseas to grow earnings as the local market has become saturated, with more than 74 per cent of Malaysians owning a mobile phone. In comparison, a market like India has less than 10 per cent of its 1.2 billion population owning a cellular phone.
TM, besides Indonesia and Sri Lanka, has investments in Singapore, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Cambodia. It has also completed buying a 49 per cent stake in India's Spice Communications Pte Ltd.
Maxis, with its investments in NTS and India's Aircel Ltd, is optimistic of doubling its existing subscriber base by 2008.
It aims to elbow its way up into the top five of India's, and the top three of Indonesia's mobile phone market.-Bussiness Times
AFFORDABLE wireless broadband services should be on the offering by local cellular operators, according to Motorola Inc Asia-Pacific president Dr Simon Leung.
He said the technology to take mobile communications forward was already present but the delivery had been obstructed because of local regulations, business model of network providers and the pricing environment.
“The Malaysian telecommunications sector is at a crossroad. Operators and regulators need to put in place key technologies and policies to introduce the next level of telecommunications services,” he told StarBiz during the company's global Seamless Mobility Solutions Showcase held here recently.
Leung said Malaysia no longer ranked as an emerging mobile market because the penetration rate had reached 80%. However, data services only formed about 18% of the average revenue per unit.
“Ultimately, consumers will use one device to access all forms of information. Thus, the logical step forward would be to provide users with broadband experience,” he said.
He added that the company's ambition was to help local operators leverage new and upcoming technologies to create a future of seamless connectivity.
“We will share our network services and applications management expertise in enhancing operators' networks,” Leung said, adding that Maxis Communications Bhd, Telekom Malaysia Bhd and Celcom (M) Bhd were among Motorola’s major local clients.
Leung described Asia-Pacific as a good mix of developing and emerging mobile markets that are able to deploy technology afresh without the legacy baggage that western markets have had to overcome.
Hence, the company is driving the concept of Seamless Mobility, whereby people are linked to information and entertainment virtually anywhere, at anytime via any device.
Leung said mobile technology was currently addressed from an entertainment perspective.
“What has been overlooked is the enterprise,” he said adding that wireless broadband technology would be more cost-effective to deploy and manage in the long term compared with wire-based infrastructure.
He said Motorola's growth would stem from sectors such as governments, enterprises, carriers and Internet service providers.
The company aims to position itself by supplying the standards and assistance to these sectors to enable them to make informed decisions on the delivery of services and products.
Motorola Malaysia's operation consists of an integrated manufacturing, research and development, Asia-Pacific distribution centre, a software centre and businesses that include mobile phones and wireless networks.
Its Penang facility has grown to become a global integrated manufacturing, research and development and distribution centre for two-way radio business, with about 50% of its products being exported.
Motorola ranks second after Nokia, with just about 20% market share in the region. Data compiled by Reuters shows that the company's shipments grew 61% to 46.1 million units during the first quarter, driven mainly by its RAZR and SLVR models.
Motorola expects its mobile devices, especially RAZR, to contribute significantly to the group over the next few years. -theStar
NasionCom Holdings Bhd plans to invest up to RM200 million to roll out its Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) infrastructure over the next two years on the expected widespread usage of the technology standards globally.
Its managing director Peter Tham said the expected WiMAX infrastructure rollout was in line with Intel’s plan for an extensive deployment of wireless chips globally, including those for mobile devices.
He said it planned to build up to another four base stations in the Klang Valley by year-end.
“We are putting out tenders on equipment for our infrastructure. We want to expand our current six stations in the Klang Valley,” he told FinancialDaily, adding that the stations were scalable.
Tham said NasionCom wanted to “position” itself by having the infrastructure ahead of the widespread implementation of the WiMAX, which will revolutionise mobile broadband wireless delivery.
WiMAX, which is a standards-based wireless technology that provides high-throughput broadband connections over long distances, extends mobility to another level vis-a-vis Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity), which is rooted to hotspot areas.
NasionCom, which already offers voice over the internet (VoIP) services, had started trials with Germany’s Deutsche Telekom last year. It also sells VoIP-equipped cellular phones.
Tham said the funding for the expansion of WiMAX capability delivery would come from a mix of borrowings, possible placement of shares to interested investors and internal funds.
WiMAX will provide fixed, nomadic, portable and, eventually, mobile wireless broadband connectivity.
Intel is working with the wireless industry to drive the deployment of WiMAX networks, which in the larger environment of convergence could see mobility being redefined.
WiMAX can be used for a number of applications, including “last mile” broadband connections, hotspots and cellular backhaul, and high-speed enterprise connectivity for business.
Intel expects that Wi-Fi, WiMAX and 3G will co-exist and that their co-existence will enable a host of new applications and business models.
Intelis developing standardised, high-performance silicon to address all of the multiple broadband wireless technologies, and a range of products for modular communications networks crucial in the deployment of broadband wireless.-theedgedaily
Research In Motion Ltd (RIM) and Maxis Communications Bhd hope to increase their Blackberry handsets sales to 7,000 this year, a 100% increase from the 3,500 units sold in 2005, with the recent launch of the new 8700G model.
Maxis chief operating officer Edward Ying said the co-operation had already arrived at a viable strategy to achieve the result.
“Previously, we were targeting the Blackberry at senior executives of our client companies, such as Coca-Cola, British American Tobacco and Genting.
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Research in Motion HK Ltd public relations specialist Queenie Chow with the Blackberry 8700G. |
“Now, we hope to market the new model to the lower-ranked employees of these companies as these are part of an existing market,” Ying told a media interview last week.
Besides re-selling to employees of its clients, he said Maxis, which was supplying the EDGE network to RIM's Blackberry, was also planning to grow the market by reaching out to sales people and other professionals, as well as small-medium enterprises.
RIM Asia-Pacific vice-president Norm Lo said he was confident the 8700G would be well-received.
“The Blackberry is not just a handset but a solution in itself. It allows people to basically compress the desktop into their hands, and has the capacity to let the user browse the Internet and check his e-mail,” he said.
Lo said this made the RM2,400 “investment” on the 8700G a wise move for members of the workforce who were always on the go, as it helped increase their productivity.
“It saves the owner a lot of time and they do not need to go back to the office to access the desktop,” he added.
Ying said Maxis would not be too concerned about competition as it was the only company in Malaysia to offer the EDGE technology for the Blackberry and, by year-end, Maxis hoped to have the 3G network available for the device.
He said 85% of customers subscribing to the Blackberry service on Maxis were corporate customers, with the remainder being individual consumers.
Lo added that with RIM’s Blackberry being the pioneer of the mobile Internet market, it would actually welcome some competition, because it would indirectly tell consumers that mobile Internet was the “in” thing.
“We wouldn't mind our competitors joining us in the industry and having a slice of the profit, if it means the overall volume of consumers buying from us also increases,” he said.
Both men, meanwhile, agreed that the mobile Internet device industry had ample room for growth, with Ying saying: “There are now about 15 million active mobile subscribers in Malaysia. If we target only the top-tier 1% of these with the Blackberry, we get a figure of roughly 150,000. The current market size as we know is only 3,500 units.”
Lo added that to keep its market, RIM had invested about US$40mil on research and development to continuously innovate Blackberry.
Two other models now available are the 7290, launched in December 2004, and the 7100G, launched in August last year.-By KEITH HIEW