By Craig Zammit
SYDNEY: Asia’s leading PDA phone and smartphone provider, Dopod International, has joined with Microsoft and HTC to officially launch its first two products in the Australian market today at an event within the Sydney Opera House.
Dopod (pronounced Du-pod), will release the first Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 3G super-slim smartphone – the 595, and the first 3G PDA mobile phone with slide-out QWERTY keyboard – the 838Pro, later this month.
“Our vision is enjoying mobility. We strive our every effort to engineering and manufacturing the lifestyle gadget with powerful functions to bring the convenience and features to our customer anytime, anywhere,” said Dopod International CEO, Jack Tong.
“Our mission is to achieve the market leadership in every market we choose to do business.”
Tong reinforced Dopod’s desire to become the benchmark for products in the PDA and smartphone sector.
“We want to introduce the world-class technology product at the same time it is produced in Europe and America. We want to operate as a global brand and we want to bench mark our product and service up to the global leading brand standard,” he said.
The 838Pro will feature WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, GPRS, EDGE, quadband GSM, triband UTMS, two megapixel camera, 2.8-inch 65k colour TFT LCD screen, Push Mail technology for instant email access and the Pocket MSN feature which allows users access to MSN Messenger, Hotmail and MSN portal while on the move.
The 838Pro will also feature the PenPower WorldCard Mobile function which will allow users to capture business cards and have the text recognised and saved into contacts immediately.
The 14.8mm thick 595 smartphone will feature Direct Push technology for instantaneous synchronisation of email, calendar and schedules, 2.2-inch 65k colour TFT LCD screen, Bluetooth, MicroSD card slot and the ability to view PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.
Dopod will compete against such established brands as iMate, O2 and HP in the well established PDA/smartphone market, and believes their alliance with such industry leaders as Microsoft will be vital to the brands success in Australia.
“We understand that this is a well-established and competitive market, that’s why we’ve partnered with HTC and Microsoft. We want to team up with the world leaders to establish our footprint here,” said Dopod county manager – Australia and New Zealand, Audrey Lin.
“We want to win the mindshare of the customer before we think about anything else,” she said.
Dopod head office will be located at North Sydney and, while distribution details are still being finalised, the 595 and 838Pro will tentatively be available through Optus and 3 mobile channels as well as through the Brightpoint and Bluepoint distribution networks.