Asus to bring mobile phones to market

Taiwanese component and notebook manufacturer Asus plans to diversify its product range by heading into the mobile phone market.

By the first quarter of next year Asus plans to bring out a 3G mobile phone in the first quarter of 2007. The product specifications are being kept under wraps until its first foray in the market.

Ted Chen, managing director at Asus said the vendor currently sold a wide range of technology products such as barebone PCs and broadband routers. However, the Asus brand was known in the local marketplace for its motherboards and notebook PCs only.

“We don’t have the resources in Australia to launch everything at once, so we are taking a slow and cautious approach – especially for a [saturated] market like mobile phones. That’s why we plan to bring out a minimum of one mobile phone per quarter,” said Chen.

Asus recently launched the P525, a quad-band PDA phone. The phone incorporates push email, Wi-Fi support and built-in numeric keypad. It also supports Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system and other office applications, including Excel and PowerPoint.

It includes GPRS support built-in, and the P525 provides includes Skype-in and Skype-out functions. The P525 currently retails for around $889.95.

Brightpoint is the current distributor of the P525 and will also look after all of Asus’ mobile phone products, said Chen.