With Britain's mobile phone users already sending nearly 1 billion text messages a month, the company says faster data entry could boost revenues for wireless service providers, which generally charge by the message.
But some industry analysts question the revolutionary zeal espoused by ElekTex's creators. Newer phones come with "predictive" text messaging, where software tries to help automatically complete words. And the keyboard's product life could be brief if voice-recognition technology becomes widely available, as anticipated.
Alex Rogers, a telecommunications consultant at Unisys Corp, said that although standard keyboards are already available for personal digital assistants, "the majority of users are happy using the traditional stylus as a way of entering information."
"I expect that this trend will continue when mobile-enabled PDAs hit the mass market," he said.
More futuristic ElekTex product ideas -- experimental devices have included a Dick Tracy-like wrist phone and a necktie phone -- have sparked more excitement among proponents of "wearable" devices.
A soft keyboard could quickly solve data-entry problems for wearable computer manufacturers like the Los Angeles-based Charmed Technology Inc.
"You want a full keyboard so you can make use of an operating system like Windows," said Charmed founder Alex Lightman.
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