last100 » INQ Mobile

INQ’s mass market ‘Twitter phone’ takes aim at overpriced QWERTY touting smartphones

Steve O'Hear — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 04:10:00 +0000

I pretty much had this one pegged. Hutchison-owned INQ have announced the follow up to the award winning INQ1 — dubbed the Facebook phone — with a QWERTY-touting handset that, amongst other things, targets users of Twitter.

The BlackBerry-esque device, called the INQ Chat 3G, pitches a host of messaging capabilities to end users, including ‘push’ email (via Gmail), Facebook access, Instant Messaging through Windows Live Messenger, Skype, and a Twitter client that provides ‘always-on’ connectivity to the micro-messaging social network so that updates are pushed ’straight to the homescreen’.

“Consumers can send tweets and retweet via the internet rather than using SMS”, boasts the press release.

Once again the pitch to carriers is that the low-cost device will help drive up data usage for users who wouldn’t otherwise purchase a more expensive smartphone.

“We build phones that focus specifically on what people want to do most on mobile, and deliver it at a price point that’s easy for consumers and profitable for operators”, said Frank Meehan, INQ’s CEO, in a canned statement. “We have completely broken the vice grip hold that high end smartphones had on great mobile internet experiences, and made them available to everybody.”

On the choice of a QWERTY keyboard, Meehan adds:

“With the INQ Chat 3G, we’ve reinvented the qwerty for consumers by creating a fantastic social mobile. With the INQ1, we were blown away by how much consumers were writing just using the standard 12 keys – 30% of them were regularly sending emails. So we know that a keypad will go down a storm.”

The company’s hyperbole aside, I think Meehan could be right on the money. The INQ Chat 3G, even if it’s only offered on carrier 3, another Hutchison subsidiary, will sell very well. It addresses two demands: A low cost QWERTY device. And one that offers the key applications of Facebook, Twitter, IM, Skype and push email. It may not have ‘an app for everything’ like the much more expensive iPhone, but in providing those five app/features alone, the Chat 3G has the main bases covered, and at a fraction of the cost. It’s also a pretty slick looking phone too.

Price-wise, beyond low cost, INQ isn’t saying yet, although it’s worth noting that the device also features GPS and 3,2 megapixel camera (but still no WiFi), so it’s likely to work out more expensive than the original INQ1 released late last year.

Oh and the INQ Chat 3G has another trick up its sleeve – iTunes syncing on a Mac and PC. Interestingly, this comes courtesy of DVD Jon’s DoubleTwist software not an official Apple partnership.

On the same day, INQ also announced a new candy bar ’social mobile’ dubbed the INQ Mini 3G.

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INQ working on a mass market ‘Twitter phone’

Steve O'Hear — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:35:08 +0000

Hutchison-owned INQ, makers of the Skype phone and INQ1 – dubbed the Facebook phone – is said to be targeting Twitter next, according to a Reuters report. That’s hardly surprising considering the rise in popularity of the ‘micro-blogging’ site and the large amount of media attention the service has garnered here in the UK, one of the primary markets for the INQ1 via mobile network “3″, which is also a subsidiary of Hutchison.

“This can really help open up and drive Twitter use on mobile when usage becomes part of your data package like on the PC”, Frank Meehan chief executive of INQ tells the news service. One again the proposition to carriers is that a low cost ‘Twitter phone’ would help to drive data usage and retention amongst mass consumers not just those who can afford a traditional ’smart phone’.

On that note, Marc Allera, director of sales and marketing at 3 UK, tells Reuters that the data usage via social networking services for customers of the INQ1 is three to four times higher than from other phones and is likely on par with Apple’s iPhone, a considerably more expensive device. Sixty five percent of INQ1 users are said to be using Facebook on a regular basis and fifty percent using Windows Live Messenger: “On usual smartphones the Internet experience is in no way close and their price is 3-4 times higher.” Again, I’m not too surprised.

In my recent review of the INQ1 I concluded by saying:

I don’t have any stats to prove it, but I’ve long believed that 90% of mobile phone owners probably only use about 10% of the device’s features. That’s unlikely to be the case with the INQ1, which not only concentrates on three of the most popular web services – Facebook, Skype and Windows Live Messenger – but integrates them in a very practical and intuitive way.

Whether or not Twitter alone warrants its own handset is another matter, and I suspect that any new divice will incorporate additional social networks and other web services as is the case on the existing INQ1, and instead will be largely differentiated by marketing alone and, perhaps, a different form factor. A QWERTY keyboard would be a welcome addition to a INQ Twitter phone, although perhaps I’m just old school. Kids around these parts don’t seem to have any problems conversing via T9 on a traditional number pad.

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Forget iPhone or GPhone, 3 to debut “Facebook phone” next week

Steve O'Hear — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:09:22 +0000

Just don’t call it the F-phone

A new low cost cellphone that puts Facebook and other social applications at its center will debut next week on Hutchinson-owned 3 in the UK and Australia, according to Unstrung. The new handset has been designed by another Hutchinson subsidiary, INQ Mobile, and is the first of a number of “low cost social mobile” offerings in the pipeline.

Apart from a dedicated Facebook client the device will also include applications for Skype, email and IM.

INQ Mobile’s CEO, Frank Meehan, told Unstrung that the company’s goal is to build cheaper 3G phones — two to three times less that the average smartphone — in order to persuade more consumers to start using mobile data.

“For 85 percent of our customers, we can’t really sell more than voice and text,” he says. “You need to drive data usage higher right across all the handset segments. You want the majority of customers, not the top-end of the community that rules strategy at the moment.”

Meehan says that with regards to Facebook integration, INQ worked closely with the social networking company in order to offer better integration than is available on existing handsets. Unlike the iPhone, for example, INQ’s Facebook application runs in the background so that users can automatically receive updates from their Facebook friends. “So Facebook becomes like SMS and can be used in the same way as SMS,” says Meehan.

Interestingly, before heading up INQ, Meehan was involved in the development of the first dedicated Skype mobile phone, also sold through 3, which we enthusiastically reported on just over a year ago.

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