Wavecom today unveiled its Feature Phones Development Lab, a complete wireless technology solution designed to enable handset manufacturers to develop advanced multimedia handsets with the shortest possible time-to-market.
A complete suite of software, hardware, development tools and services, the Wavecom Feature Phones Development Lab includes technology for worldwide coverage, high-end software features, and support for the latest multimedia peripherals. It makes a wealth of gaming, picture and video features available for handset manufacturers, enabling them to target the Feature Phones market segment.
Built around the unique quadband (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) hardware platform WISMO Pac P5186, the Feature Phones Development Lab includes an unprecedented range of software options, including support for a Java MIDP 2.0 colour gaming engine. Handset manufacturers can create mobile telephones including a camera for still picture (VGA) and video record, with a display of up to 176x220 pixels and 262k colours. They can integrate video streaming, FM radio, MP3 player, and MPEG 4 features (video playback and record).
Handset manufacturers can include connectivity and synchronisation features such as USB, IrDA and SyncML, messaging features such as EMS, MMS and e-mail, and Internet connectivity using WAP2.0 and xHTML browser. They may choose between multiple formats of melody support and MP3 music for ring tones. They may also include memory extension for pictures, videos and music storage by adding SD or MMC card support.
Thanks to the Open MMI development tool, customers can adapt the user interface to include predictive text input and support for any language as well as the colours, screen savers, wallpapers and skins of their choice. The Feature Phones Development Lab also includes an extensive service offering, including design and development support, certification support, production set-up and manufacturing support.
"The demand for high-end mobile phones is increasing, and we expect the total market for such products to exceed 40 million units by next year," says Guy Lanrezac, Wavecom's Marketing Director for Handset Applications. "Consumers are adopting new features at a fast pace, while operators are seeking to increase ARPU (average revenue per user) and are therefore promoting new services such as game downloads and video MMS in order to increase air time."
He continues: "As a consequence, handset makers currently see great new market opportunities -- but they are also under real pressure to bring full-feature quality products to market before the market moves on. Our Feature Phones Development Lab has been designed to help them face that challenge, and we look forward to accompany our customers in their efforts to beat the competition in this very exciting market."