Far EasTone now in league with Sharp

Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) has joined forces with Sharp Corp of Japan to develop color-screen handsets designed to match Far EasTone's mobile-phone content.

The phones offer one-button use of multimedia messaging services (MMS), along with camera and Internet functions.

"Users can directly access our multimedia services by simply clicking a button," said Jan Nilsson, president of Far EasTone.

Nilsson praised Sharp's color-screen and digital camera handsets, saying the company has formed similar alliances in Japan.

According to the Industrial Technology Research Institute, a government-funded think tank, in 2000 Sharp cooperated with Japanese mobile operator J-Phone in manufacturing the world's first digital-camera embedded handset. And color screens now dominate the Japanese market, accounting for nearly 90 percent of all handsets sold there.

Sharp also entered Europe last month by producing phones for UK-based Vodafone Group Plc.

"The phone we tailor-made for Far EasTone is Sharp's first Chinese-language handset," said Hideaki Kamitsuma, corporate director with Sharp.

"This is also a stepping stone for our future entry into the China market."

Far EasTone priced the Sharp GX-i98 handset at NT$23,800. With a two-year contract, it will cost only NT$19,000.

The new handsets are designed to be user-friendly.

"Simplicity is very important ... If you need an academic degree to use it, nobody will," Nilsson said.

An industry analyst said standardized handsets are good for content providers.

"Content generators can develop games, graphics or other mobile services easier when they have some rules to follow," said Gary Lai (賴晴風), a telecom analyst at Insight Pacific Investment Research (月涵證券).

He said that the content is also important, because "only attractive content can boost market demand."

"Far EasTone's [tailor-made handset] strategy is quite smart from this point of view," Lai said.

The company also said that it is partnering with up to 70 content providers, including several Japan-based mobile-game developers, animation providers and ring-tone developers.

"The company chose a very efficient way to transfer the Japan experience to Taiwan," Lai said.

According to Nilsson, the company hopes to attract about 50,000 Sharp GX-i98 users over the next two to three months.

Far EasTone's MMS-services launch is actually months behind industry leaders Taiwan Cellar Corp (台哥大) and Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), which entered the field in June and October, respectively.

Acceptance of MMS services has not been good, prompting all three companies to offer the service for free until early next year.