Hutchison handset unit eyes growth
INQ Mobile aims to offer new telephone through other service providers
Conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa, which operates 3G cellular network services in Asia and Europe, plans to expand the reach of its newly established handset company to bring more sophisticated mobile-telephone applications to the mass market in Hong Kong and on the mainland.
INQ Mobile chief executive Frank Meehan said the company intended to pursue deals that would get network service providers other than Hutchison's 3 to sell and support the INQ1, its first handset offering.
The INQ1, which was first launched exclusively on the 3 network in Britain and Australia in November last year, is touted as 'the world's most advanced social-networking phone' - integrating e-mail, instant messaging and online social-networking services, such as Facebook, in an intuitive way.
'We will surely have deals with other mobile-telephone network operators. Our goal is to bring internet communications to the mass market,' said Mr Meehan, noting that INQ Mobile would expand into Hong Kong this year and on the mainland next year.
'We are interested in the mainland because there are good platforms in place, such as the instant-messaging service QQ.'
The service, which is available in Chinese and English and is formally known as Tencent QQ, is maintained by Hong Kong-listed Tencent Holdings and partly owned by South African media company Naspers.
Mr Meehan said INQ Mobile, which was set up last year, was originally the handset procurement team inside Hutchison.
The group was responsible for creating the first made-to-order handset for Hutchison, with the launch of the 3 Skypephone in 2007. The device featured integrated support for Skype, an internet service that allows users to make voice calls online to other Skype users and telephones around the world.
Mr Meehan said Hutchison, like other progressive mobile-telephone network operators around the world, had rolled out flat-rate data plans to increase the use of mobile broadband services.
'The flat-rate plan was designed to help more subscribers use instant messaging, e-mail, video and music services with their internet-capable mobile telephones,' he said.
That approach, however, led operators to heavily subsidise their subscribers' smartphone purchases, which research company International Data Corp described as a 'converged device' that brought together traditional voice call capability with functions typically found in a personal computer.
Analysis company ABI Research estimated 171 million smartphones out of a total 1.21 billion mobile telephone handsets were shipped last year.
'Since smartphones currently occupy a niche in the global handset market, we decided to produce a mass-market device with smartphone features,' Mr Meehan said. 'Our new telephone is not only good for text messages and voice calls, but makes it simple for users to get one-button direct access to e-mail, Skype and Facebook.'
The price of an INQ1 is about US$200 - less than the cost of a typical high-end smartphone. For example, Apple's 16-gigabyte iPhone 3G, which was introduced in Hong Kong in July last year, costs about US$299.
When the INQ1 was released in Britain last November, Hutchison's 3 priced it at #79 (HK$879) for pre-paid card users. It was offered for free on a #15 per month plan that delivered unlimited free Facebook, Skype, Windows Live Messenger and web access, plus 75 minutes of calls to other networks, unlimited text messaging and unlimited e-mail.
