JEDDAH, 15 May 2006 — Competition is intensifying among premium brand mobiles, with major manufacturers and dealers introducing new products with novel and exclusive features.
What manufacturers are doing to beat the competition is to manufacture and introduce innovative products with unique features that will enable them to attract buyers who desire new mobiles or change their existing handsets. Some 30 to 35 percent of the demand for mobiles is for new handsets. The rest are from those who want to change their existing phones.
LG entered its premium brand yesterday with the introduction of the “world’s first” mobile with a touch pad, the first from its “Chocolate” range of designer phones.
Launching the phone at a press conference at the Jeddah Hilton, LG General Manager C.K. Cho said the phone, already introduced in South Korea, the UK and the rest of Europe, has attracted “good reviews.”
Cho said: “We’re sure that this phone will create a great level of consumer interest across world markets, and there will be a definite impact all over the Middle East, and specifically Saudi Arabia which has the region’s second highest mobile penetration.”
“Modern buyer trends are governed as much by emotion as by product specification and the new phone is totally unique, very desirable and yet affordable,” Cho said.
“The Chocolate phone remains completely black until the ‘touch-Pad,’ a world’s first for mobile phones, is gently touched,” said LG’s Senior Manager Simon Kim. Once activated, the phone’s signature design feature, its glowing red touch-sensitive icons bring to life a “hidden” full color screen that completes the phone’s unique look and feel.
The new phone has sold over 400,000 units since it was launched in Korea and Europe, Kim said.
The introduction of this phone will be followed by others from the Chocolate range. “LG expects to sell 100,000 units in the next six months,” Kim said, adding that with this phone LG expects to take a seven percent share of the market.
The new phone boasts a class-leading MP3/AAC music player, 128-mega onboard memory, a 1.3 mega-pixel camera and video camera. “And all these features in a phone that is slim enough to slip into the pocket of a shirt or pair of fitted jeans. The battery-life is an impressive 200 hours standby with 3.20 hours of talk time, Khalil Sadawi, marketing manager for LG GSM, said in his presentation. LG’s GSM Service Manager Bilal Ali demonstrated how a video taken from the phone could be easily stored in a computer or a laptop.
